Ørsted's billion-kroner sale of the electricity distribution business Radius is now a reality. The competition authorities and the Danish Energy Agency have approved the sale, and it can therefore be completed on August 31. Ørsted announced this in a statement to the stock exchange.
The buyer is the cooperative Seas-NVE, which is paying 21.3 billion kroner for Radius' and Ørsted's private customer and outdoor lighting business.
Radius supplies approximately one million homes and businesses in the Copenhagen area, North Zealand and parts of Central Zealand with electricity. The private customer business sells electricity to approximately 717,000 electricity customers, and the outdoor lighting business operates approximately 145,000 street lamps.
The sale of Radius was announced in September 2019, but had to go through the authorities before it could become a reality.
Here, the approval is given on the condition that Seas-NVE divests 107,000 natural gas customers to avoid price increases for private customers.
- The merged company would become very large in the gas market, and all natural gas customers in Denmark risked significant price increases as a result of weaker competition, says the Chairman of the Competition Council, Christian Schultz.
Seas-NVE has accepted this and presented the cooperative OK as the successor. This transaction is also subject to the approval of the authorities.
As early as 2018, Ørsted was close to selling Radius to a foreign company, but a political majority blocked the plans.
The sale was feared to mean rising electricity prices for customers. Therefore, a majority agreed to stop the privatization of critical infrastructure. However, a door was opened ajar for a sale to a consumer-owned cooperative, and this meant that Seas-NVE could run with Radius.
Seas-NVE is the largest cooperatively owned energy company in Denmark with more than 560,000 customers, of which 375,000 each own a small part of the company.
Ritzau
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