Rebirth of England.

Chapter 812 Power Group
The current United Energy Group owns a number of businesses including oil and gas exploration, natural gas transmission and storage (British Gas), and power generation and distribution (British Distribution).

Their subsidiary British Gas previously entered the French natural gas market by acquiring Total Gas Infrastructure (TIGF) under Total Energy of France. After being acquired by British Gas, TIGF became their branch in France and currently occupies approximately 20% of the French natural gas storage and transportation market.

If the acquisition of TIGF by United Energy Group into the French market was not considered a large-scale move, then the purchase of shares in Enel is a very large investment.

Because Enel SpA can be said to be a giant company. It ranked fourth among power companies in the Fortune Global 500 list released last year. It is the second largest power company in Europe after Electricité de France, and its current market value is as high as 500 billion US dollars!
Based on the current market value alone, the 32% stake held by Rhein Energy Group is worth more than $160 billion!
What's more, in order to complete this acquisition, United Energy Group will have to pay a certain premium - for a monopoly power company like Enel, every share transaction will be a highly anticipated event.

In order to complete this acquisition, United Energy Group will issue corporate bonds with a total value of US$100 billion to its major shareholders, and will take out nearly US$100 billion from its own profits to pay for this acquisition.

Of course, most of the corporate bonds they issue will be purchased by funds under the DS Group.

After all, this time they have made huge profits from the European sovereign debt crisis and the previous short-selling operations in Japan and South Korea, and now they need to invest these profits in the acquisition of high-quality assets.

This is also the reason why Hugo, as the chairman of API Petroleum Group, is so enthusiastic about Barron.

After all, API Petroleum Group is not among the top oil companies in Italy, and its scale is not comparable to that of Enel. Enel is the third largest company in Italy, second only to ENI and UniCredit...

Even the Fiat Group owned by Beatrice's second brother-in-law John Elkann has a market value far higher than API Petroleum Group...

After all, Fiat Group is the seventh largest company in Italy, with a market value of around $7 billion!
The main business of API Petroleum Group is the manufacture and sale of petroleum products. They own widely distributed gas stations in Italy and their own crude oil refineries. They are a downstream enterprise in the petroleum industry.

Prior to this, API Petroleum Group also cooperated with United Energy Group, and they purchased some of their finished oil and crude oil from United Energy Group.

Through acquisitions and new construction, United Energy Group has also established a number of gas stations in Ireland, Britain and France, thereby controlling part of the downstream sales.

But for now, these are still not the main industrial directions of United Energy Group.

In fact, this time United Energy Group's acquisition of shares of Italian National Electricity Company is not as simple as it seems on the surface, just to obtain shares of this company.

Among the shareholders of Enel, the Italian government currently holds the largest stake, with 32.4% of the shares, only slightly higher than the 32% held by RheinEnergy Group.

However, RheinEnergy could not make it past this 0.4% gap - any increase in their shareholding on this basis would require the consent of the Italian government. It is clear that the Italian government will not give up its controlling stake in Enel, which is why RheinEnergy finally gave up and prepared to sell these shares.

British Distribution, a subsidiary of United Energy Group, not only owns distribution networks and related power stations in Ireland and the UK, but also owns a 40% stake in British Energy Group, the main nuclear power plant operator in the UK. In addition, British Distribution Company also owns power stations and distribution networks in Australia and Southeast Asia.

It can be said that the British Power Distribution Company has become one of the largest power companies in the whole of the UK. After completing the acquisition of 32% of the shares of Enel, United Energy Group will try to persuade the Italian government to merge the British Power Distribution Company with Enel, thus creating a power group with operations in many European countries, as well as Australia and Southeast Asia. It will surpass Electricité de France in one fell swoop and become the largest power group in Europe.

I believe that Italy should still be interested in this proposal, even if the Italian government will lose its controlling stake in the company at that time.

But after all, we are in the period of European debt crisis, and the situation in Italy is probably not much better...

The current Prime Minister of Italy is still Berlusconi, but Barron knows that he will resign as prime minister in November this year.

The reason is that the Italian sovereign debt crisis intensified. Faced with the serious economic crisis, Berlusconi was unable to deal with it properly and eventually resigned.

At that time, Italian bond interest rates soared to 7.5%, making Italy unable to repay its debts, and also dragged countries such as Spain, Portugal and even the entire eurozone into crisis.

It is already July, and there are only a few months left. I believe that by that time, let alone agreeing to the merger of the two power groups, even selling the government's shares in Enel would not be unacceptable to the Italian government, which is in urgent need of funds...

"In fact, in addition to Enel, Gazprom and some Italian banks are all assets that can be acquired..."

Barron had a conversation with Daisy before coming to Italy, and he said:

"We also have relevant short-selling operations in Italy. Buying when the stock prices of some companies are low will turn our profits into real assets."

Britain, France, Italy and Germany will be the core parts of Europe and will also be the key areas for the layout of some industries controlled by him.

Once this area is controlled and then spread to other countries, it will be able to achieve twice the result with half the effort.

(End of this chapter)