IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v37y2009i11p4672-4678.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Expanding opportunities: Strategic buying of utilities in new EU member states

Author

Listed:
  • LaBelle, Michael

Abstract

During the 1990s, limited investment opportunities in Western Europe, the opening of the energy markets in Eastern Europe, and the future expansion of the European Union (EU) prompted an expansionist strategy by energy companies from the original EU member states. In this paper, the acquisition and divestiture activities and strategies of utilities from France and Germany are analyzed in the context of the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargements. Through quantitative and qualitative data analysis, including the development of two case studies, the strategy for expansion and evolution in new member states is examined. The results demonstrate a concerted effort to establish economies of scale through ownership of distribution companies. A change in strategy occurs as these privatization opportunities disappear. Generation and trading activity become the growth area for these companies as electricity supply becomes another factor that can contribute to the economies of scale. Recent EU-supported efforts towards regionalization of electricity markets, positions these companies well due to their strong regional presence. This paper will explore these issues in the context of ownership and geographic distribution.

Suggested Citation

  • LaBelle, Michael, 2009. "Expanding opportunities: Strategic buying of utilities in new EU member states," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4672-4678, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:37:y:2009:i:11:p:4672-4678
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(09)00436-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. LaBelle, Michael Carnegie, 2017. "In pursuit of energy justice," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 615-620.
    2. Patricia Bachiller & Giuseppe Grossi, 2012. "Great expectations but poor results: financial and social performance of the T oscana Energia merger," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 69-74, January.
    3. Gampert, Markus & Madlener, Reinhard, 2011. "Pan-European management of electricity portfolios: Risks and opportunities of contract bundling," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 2855-2865, May.
    4. Michael Carnegie LaBelle, 2023. "Energy as a weapon of war: Lessons from 50 years of energy interdependence," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 14(3), pages 531-547, June.
    5. LaBelle, Michael, 2012. "Constructing post-carbon institutions: Assessing EU carbon reduction efforts through an institutional risk governance approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 390-403.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mergers Utilities Privatization;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:37:y:2009:i:11:p:4672-4678. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.