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TEXT 88

European utilities欧洲公用事业

Power struggles

能源之争（陈继龙编译）

Nov 30th 2006

From The Economist print edition

Political and business interests collide as Europe's energy firms consolidate

欧洲能源公司合并引发政治与商业利益冲突。

“WE expected a wave—but what happened was a tsunami,” says Emmanuel Turpin, a utilities analyst at Morgan Stanley, an investment bank. Energy-industry insiders predicted a series of mergers and acquisitions in European utilities at the beginning of this year. But hardly anyone expected the announcement in February of two of the biggest-ever takeovers in corporate Europe: the bid for Endesa, a Spanish electricity company, by E.ON, a German power giant; and the merger of Gaz de France (GDF), a French gas firm, and Suez, another French utility.

摩根斯坦利投资银行的公用事业分析专家伊曼纽尔•特尔平说：“我们本来期待的是一阵浪潮，可发生的却是一场海啸。”能源产业内部人士早就预言今年伊始欧洲公用事业将实施一连串的并购，但今年2月公诸于众的两宗迄今为止欧洲最大的并购案却是大多数人始料未及的：一个是德国能源巨头E.ON公司竞购西班牙Endesa电力公司，另一个是法国燃气公司（GDF）与另一家法国公用事业公司Suez的合并。

The latest takeover in the industry, announced this week, is smaller, less spectacular and not much of a surprise. Iberdrola, a Spanish electricity company, announced on November 28th its euro17.2 billion ($22.5 billion) bid for Scottish Power, a British utility. Compared with the E.ON bid, now valued at euro37 billion, and the euro78 billion merger of Suez and GDF, the deal looks like small beer. （1）Yet the acquisition will create one of Europe's six biggest utilities and a world leader in renewable energy. And in striking contrast to the two bigger deals, which are bogged down[1] in legal and political quagmires, it is likely to proceed smoothly.

相比之下，本周宣布的能源产业最近一次并购则比较小，不太引人注目，而且也不怎么出人意料。11月28日，西班牙Iberdrola电力公司宣布将以172亿欧元（约合225亿美元）收购英国公用事业公司Scottish Power。相比E.ON竞购案（现价已达370亿欧元）及苏伊士与GDF之间780亿欧元的合并案，这笔交易看上去似乎微不足道，不过本次并购将造就一个跻身欧洲前六位的大型公用事业公司及全球可再生能源先锋。而且，与陷入法律和政治泥潭而停滞不前的前述两单大买卖形成鲜明对比的是，这一次有可能一帆风顺。

（2）The catalyst for the frenetic[2] merger activity among European utilities is the run-up to full deregulation of the European Union's energy market. For more than a decade the European Commission has been trying to enable energy producers and distributors to compete freely across national borders. The final deadline of the EU's bulky legislative programme to liberalise the market is July 2007. By then member states are supposed to have implemented all EU energy directives.

欧洲公用事业领域之所以掀起这场合并风潮，是因为有关方面正在酝酿彻底放宽欧盟能源市场。十多年来，欧盟委员会一直努力促进能源生产商和销售商展开跨越国界的自由竞争。欧盟旨在实现市场自由化的一揽子立法计划完成的最后截止时间是2007年7月，届时各成员国应当均已遵照执行欧盟各项能源指导方针。

Ignacio Galán, the boss of Iberdrola, said this week that the fast-approaching deregulation in Europe, which will put big, cross-border firms in a stronger position, was one of the reasons for his bid for Scottish Power. But Mr Galán did not mention the more probable driver of the deal. ACS, a Spanish construction company, recently bought a 10% stake in Iberdrola with a view to merging it with Unión Fenosa, another Spanish power company in which ACS has a 40.5% stake. Mr Galán is opposed to the deal. Iberdrola is the world's leading operator of wind turbines, but Fenosa relies heavily on coal-fired plants, so a merger would sully[3] Iberdrola's image.

本周Iberdrola公司总裁伊格莱西奥•加兰说，该公司收购苏格兰电力公司的原因之一就是欧洲放宽市场在即，大型跨国公司因此将处于更加强势的位置。不过这笔交易很可能另有所图，但加兰并未提及。西班牙ACS建筑公司最近收购了Iberdrola10％的股份，期望Iberdrola能与西班牙另一家电力公司Unión Fenosa合并，而ACS已持有Unión Fenosa 40.5％的股份。加兰并不赞成这一合并交易。Iberdrola是全球风力发电机的主要运营商，但Fenosa则高度依赖火力发电，因此合并会招致Iberdrola形象受损。

Investors and analysts are lukewarm[4] about his proposed alternative, however. （3）There is an obvious logic to buying PPM Energy, an American wind-power developer owned by Scottish Power, given that Iberdrola took over two other wind-power companies in America earlier this year. But PPM is only one-fifth of Scottish Power's business. Combining Iberdrola with Scottish Power will achieve very few cost savings as there is no other geographic overlap. And Iberdrola is taking on lots of debt to finance the pricey takeover.

但是，投资者和分析人士对他收购Scottish Power的主张反应都比较冷淡。鉴于伊维尔德罗拉公司今年早些时候已经并购了另外两家美国风力发电公司，接下来收购美国PPM能源公司（Scottish Power旗下的一家风力发电开发公司）显然是顺理成章的事情。不过PPM仅占Scottish Power公司总交易量的五分之一。由于Iberdrola与Scottish Power在运营地域上并不存在重叠，因此双方联手并不能缩减多少成本，而且Iberdrola为了筹措巨额收购费也将重债缠身。

（4）But at least the objections to the deal are commercial, rather than political or legal, which is more than can be said for Europe's two other big energy mergers. It is a full year since a failed bid for Scottish Power prompted Wulf Bernotat, the boss of E.ON, to plot his big coup: a takeover of Endesa, which would make E.ON one of the world's largest electricity and gas firms, with over 50m customers in more than 30 countries.

不过即便有人反对这次收购，那也是出于商业角度考虑，而与政治抑或法律无关。然而，两宗能源巨头的合并案就不好说（是否受到政治或法律因素干涉）了。自从竞购Scottish Power失败整整一年来，E.ON公司总裁伍尔夫•伯诺泰特一直都图谋卷土重来——收购恩德萨，从而使E.ON公司成为在30多个国家拥有5千余万客户的全球最大电力与燃气公司之一。

Mr Bernotat's grand plan is facing strong resistance in Madrid. The Spanish government wants to keep Endesa in Spanish hands, so the country's regulator imposed no fewer than 19 conditions on the German bid (and later added some more for good measure). The deal is also entangled in a legal dispute between Endesa and Gas Natural, another Spanish power company that wants to buy Endesa. Meanwhile the merger of GDF and Suez is in serious trouble. On November 21st a judge in Paris blocked GDF from completing the deal. The judge agreed that workers' representatives, who are afraid of job cuts, needed more time to look at the terms of the deal. GDF immediately appealed, but the appeals court upheld[5] the ruling.

伯诺泰特的宏伟蓝图正面临马德里方面强有力的阻挠。西班牙政府希望Endesa继续掌控在西班牙人手中，所以该国监管机构对德国人的收购强加了不下19个限制条件（后来又追加了一些条款）。这场收购还卷入了西班牙燃气公司Gas Natural与其欲收购的Endesa之间的法律争论之中。其间，GDF与Suez的合并也遇到了大麻烦。11月21日，巴黎一位法官判令禁止GDF继续实施合并。该法官认为，担心合并会招致裁员的工人代表需要更多的时间来考虑这笔交易的各项条款。GDF随即提出了上诉，但上诉法庭维持了一审法庭的判决。

（5）The delay will postpone a shareholders' vote on the deal until next spring, when the campaign for the French presidency will be in full swing[6]. Doing the deal just before the election will be tricky, but trying to do it afterwards will be even harder. Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate for the presidency, has vowed to renationalise GDF if she wins. And Nicolas Sarkozy, the most promising candidate of the centre-right, might well drop his half-hearted support for the merger.

如此拖延下去的话，股东对这次交易的投票就只能推迟到恰逢法国总统竞选热火朝天的明年春天举行了。要在选举前做成这笔交易很难，然而想在选举后做成就更是难上加难。社会党总统候选人塞戈雷纳•劳尔已经立誓一旦获选就将GDF重新收归国有。最有希望获胜的中右翼总统候选人尼古拉斯•萨尔科奇对这次合并的态度原本就比较暧昧，他最终也完全有可能彻底放弃对它的支持。

But insiders still reckon the two mega-mergers will go ahead. “We are confident the Spanish and French deals will eventually go through,” says José Javier Ruiz Fernández, a utilities analyst at Exane, a French broker. The political cost of the Spanish government's tactics is high, so it will probably give up its resistance to E.ON. The European Commission ruled in September that all but one of the 19 conditions imposed on the E.ON bid were illegal, and it said on November 29th that all of the regulator's new conditions were illegal too.

不过知情人士仍认为两大公司的合并会进行下去。法国Exane经纪公司公用事业分析专家路易斯•费尔南德斯说：“我们坚信法西之间的这笔买卖最终是可以做成的。”西班牙政府将为它所采取的手段付出高昂的政治代价，因此它很有可能不再阻挠E.ON公司入主Endesa。欧盟委员会于9月裁定强加给E.ON公司的19个附加条件几乎无一例外都是不合法的，接着在11月29日又称监管部门新增的条款也都不合法。

Next year consolidation will continue, though at a less busy pace. Valuations of European utilities are now very high. Governments remain opposed to acquisitions of utilities by foreigners—except, that is, in Britain. After the takeover of Scottish Power, foreigners will own four of Britain's six big utilities. Only Centrica, a gas retailer, and Scottish and Southern, the third-biggest energy utility, will remain in domestic hands. （6）They are tempting targets, but any suitor[7] will need deep pockets—and confidence that the European market will indeed, despite all the political meddling, soon become truly open.

合并明年还将继续，不过步子会稍慢一些。目前收购欧洲公用事业公司的门槛还非常高。各国政府依旧反对外商并购本国公用事业公司——英国除外。收购Scottish Power后，外商将入主英国6家大型公用事业公司中的4家。掌握在英国人自己手中的仅剩下天然气零售商Centrica和第三大公用能源公司Scottish&Southern。这两家公司具有很强的吸引力，但任何打算收购他们的公司都必须有殷实的家底，并且确信无论遭到怎样的政治干预，欧洲能源市场都会很快真正实现开放。

[QUIZ]

英译汉（将划线部分英文翻译成中文）：

[NOTES](OXFORD)

1. bog v. v (-gg-) (phr v) bog (sth) down (usu passive 通常用于被动语态) (a) (cause sth to) sink into mud or wet ground （使某物）陷入泥沼: The tank (got) bogged down in the mud. 坦克陷入泥沼之中. (b) (fig 比喻) (cause sth to) become stuck and unable to make progress （使某物）陷入困境不能前进: Our discussions got bogged down in irrelevant detail. 我们的讨论纠缠在无关紧要的细节上.

2. frenetic adj.  frenetic activity is fast and not very organized 发狂的，狂乱的 --She rushes from job to job at a frenetic pace.//

3. sully v. (文或修辞, 通常作比喻) make (sth) dirty; stain; ruin or destroy (sb's reputation, etc) 弄脏（某物）; 玷污或破坏（某人的名声等）: I wouldn't sully my hands by acceptinga bribe. 我决不接受贿赂, 一尘不染. * sully sb's name, honour, etc 玷污某人的名声、荣誉等.

4. lukewarm adj. 1 (of liquids) only slightly warm; tepid （指液体）不冷不热的, 微温的: Heat the milk until it is just lukewarm. 把奶热一下, 温温就行.  2 ~ (about sb/sth) (fig 比喻) not eager or enthusiastic 不热烈的; 冷淡的: get a ,lukewarm re`ception 受冷漠的接待 * Her love had grown lukewarm. 她的爱情已淡薄.

5. uphold v. 1 support (a decision, etc) against attack 维护, 支持（决定等）: uphold a verdict, policy, principle 支持某项裁决、政策、原则.  2 maintain (a custom, etc) 维持, 保持（习俗等）: uphold ancient traditions 保持古老的传统.

6. in full swing 正在全力进行中, 活跃

7. suitor n. (dated 旧) man courting a woman 追求某女子的人: She had rejected all her many suitors. 她拒绝了所有追求她的人.