RWE (RWEG.DE) and E.ON (EONGn.DE) are not planning to merge to create an energy giant after they shook up the German market with an asset swap, the chief executives of the two companies said in a newspaper interview published on Friday.
RWE and E.ON unveiled plans last week to break up and share renewables, networks and retail group Innogy (IGY.DE), the largest restructuring in the country’s energy market since Germany decided to phase out nuclear power.
“There are no plans at all for a merger,” RWE CEO Rolf Martin Schmitz told the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. “That would not be clever because the value chain would no longer be there.”
E.ON CEO Johannes Teyssen agreed: “Talk of a merger brings to mind a monopoly.”
RWE gained a holding of almost 17 percent in E.ON as part of the asset swap, but Schmitz said it was a financial stake that the company would not keep forever.
“We would first need to find better investments before it would make sense to sell the shares,” he told the paper.
