Treasury receives 7 offers for energy supplier STOEN

The Treasury Ministry received seven offers by the Friday deadline for a stake in STOEN, one of the largest energy distributors in Poland. Among those bidding for between 10% and 25% of Warsaw's energy supplier are five international companies, namely Vattenfall of Sweden, Electrabel of Belgium, France's EDF, and two German enterprises, RWE and Bewag. The other two interested companies are Poland's publicly-listed Energomontaz Polnoc, and PSEG Polska, owned by US giant PSEG Global. Prawo i Gospodarka estimates that a 25% stake in STOEN is worth around $125 million. Despite the interest it is uncertain whether the sale will still go ahead, after Treasury Minister Wieslaw Kaczmarek said recently he might cancel the STOEN privatization. Kaczmarek claimed it would make more sense first to merge distributors with a producer, and then to sell shares in the larger company. (Prawo i Gospodarka, p. 4; Gazeta Wyborcza, p. 25) A.K.