"Water war": Engie sells its shares to Veolia, Suez has not said its last word
Despite the government's negative vote, Engie sold its shares in Suez to Veolia.
REUTERS / Charles Platiau
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
Engie's board of directors voted on Monday for the sale to Veolia of the shares it holds in Suez.
A blow for the unions of Suez which intend to intensify the fight against this operation.
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The Suez group denounced this Tuesday, October 6 in a
press
release "
unprecedented and irregular conditions
", the day after the agreement on the purchase by Veolia of 29.9% of its capital held by Engie.
On Monday evening, Engie's board of directors decided to accept Veolia's offer and sell it its shares.
And this despite the vote to the contrary by the State, shareholder up to 22% of Engie.
An operation that Suez continues to consider "
hostile
".
But Suez has not said its last word.
"
We are not going to stop like that,
reacted this Tuesday Franck Reinhold Von Essen, CGT secretary of the European works council of Suez.
We have no guarantees, we still have thousands of jobs at stake, we don't want to be treated like that, we have no records, we weren't warned, we weren't given consulted, we had nothing in the file and we do not understand why we are treated like that, like any merchandise, where I sell you and I buy you and you do what I tell you.
For now, I think that we, everything that we have undertaken, we will continue and then we will try to accelerate and then we will try to show that we are really against it, that it is hostile, that we see it as an assault, we will go up in the range.
Just because a shareholder changes the head of a company does not mean that we can accept losing
5,000 jobs, whether it is Veolia or someone else.
It would have been someone else, we would ask ourselves fewer questions.
Because there is not the problem of competition, but because it is Veolia we do not say that it is the bad guys and that we are the good guys, it is not that, it is that as we are in the same sector of activity, we exercise the same profession on the same national scope, which poses problems.
"
►Also read: Veolia wants to swallow Suez: a Franco-French battle for the global market
For his part, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire estimated on France Info that this takeover “would
not work
” without an agreement between the two giants.
"
I hope that the discussions will resume immediately
," said Bruno Le Maire, denouncing "
the intransigence
" of Suez and "
the haste
" of Veolia.
The standoff between the two French water and waste treatment specialists began when Veolia announced at the end of August its intention to create a global giant by buying up most of Engie's stake in Suez, before launching a takeover bid on the balance of the shares.
(With AFP)
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