Tuesday, July 19, 2022

What's With Uniper At This Point?

 For those who aren't into this fast-moving story....Uniper is a Düsseldorf-based energy (natural gas) company.  

It is the big player in Germany, for the product. 

Basically, as prices were escalating by Gazprom (the Russia company)....Uniper was a step or two behind, and is in heavy debt issues because they didn't act fast enough on raising prices for consumers.  

So yesterday, if you follow this....Uniper had a deal arranged with a financial unit.....to provide 2-billion Euro, to cover 'issues'.

Is this enough?  Well....no.  That's also leading to the stories that the Scholz government is being drawn into conversations, and asked to provide some relief.  

How much?  This is not clear....but purely over the chatter involved....I'd say it's a minimum of one-billion Euro, and some folks are suggesting around 8-billion is the amount that the government is being drawn into.

A no-interest loan?  More or less.....that seems to be the key element of this.

Could the government just say no?  They could, and then we'd go to Uniper in some collapse situation.  

During the Covid era....the government did come and save a number of companies (Lufthansa for example).  

I anticipate some amount of money (exceeding one-billion Euro) will loaned out, and Uniper will be forced to open the books and admit any issues.  The bad news?  Some people were lucky in the slow approach by Uniper on natural gas pricing....but via taxes and revenue required to save Uniper now.....they will pay a price.  

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