PPC receives four bids for closely watched HEDNO sale

Greece’s Public Power Corporation has received four binding bids for the sale of a 49 percent stake in Hellenic Electricity Distribution Network Operator, in a key deal for the country’s energy market. PPC said the bidders are: CVC Capital Partners Group, First Sentier Investors Group, KKR Group and the Macquarie Group.

This will now be followed by checks from PPC on the technical files submitted by the interested parties and then opening of the financial bids. The participants are international investors, with tens of billions of funds under management. Particularly:

• CVC Capital Partners is a privately held fund management company with over $ 117 billion in assets based in Luxembourg.
• First Sentier is a $ 176 billion asset management company with investments in electricity and gas distribution networks.
• KKR (USA), manages assets of 252 billion, part of which is invested in infrastructure.
• The MACQUARIE Group (Australia) has 420 billion in assets under management, including in energy networks.

With a book value of some 3.5 billion euros, HEDNO is one of the most prized assets up for sale in Greece’s power market. Investors see large opportunities in HEDNO's 239,000-kilometer distribution network due to investments needed to upgrade it and the ability to chain onto the network 5G fiber optics cables that can provide an array of telecom and internet services.

HEDNO could also act as a base to expand into other parts of southeast Europe, experts say. Noticeably absent from the tender were Chinese companies, that were expected earlier in the process to show strong interest in the sale.