The news from undisclosed sources to the Australian Financial Review comes after GDF Suez sold a 28% stake in four Australian power stations to Japanese investment house Mitsui & Co.
“It’s understood an even greater slice may now be shopped around in the same assets, as GDF Suez, which is 36.7%-owned by the French government and ranks as the world’s largest power producer by output, grapples with a debt burden of close to $34 billion,”AFR’ Street Talk column reported on Monday.
The sources claimed that Deutsche Bank was running the process and negotiations with potential bidders had been underway for some time.
Chinese companies and RATCH-Australia – a joint venture between Thai utility Ratchaburi and Transfield Services – are reportedly interested.
In April GDF Suez confirmed to Energy News that the Bonaparte floating LNG project it operates would enter the long-awaited front-end engineering and design phase this year, with the final investment decision scheduled for 2015.
