The Hindu Business Line : REpower deal breathing down the political alley?

Why so? It seems the outgoing French Finance Minister was keeping a lid on Areva's bid; but the President-elect, Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, is expected to have Mr François Fillon as Prime Minister, who is said to be "totally convinced" that Areva must win the bid.

This, according to Financial Times, cited on www.salon.com in an article titled `India vs France for a piece of Germany'.

For starters, Areva is a state-owned French nuclear power company, and Suzlon Energy is a Pune-based wind-power company with `international business headquarters in Denmark', as Mr Andrew Leonard mentions in a posting dated May 10, in the Salon article.

Wind turbine power

REpower is the third-largest wind turbine manufacturer in Germany, behind Enercon and Vestas, and ahead of suppliers such as GE Energy, Siemens and Nordex, as per a January press release on www.repower.de.

"Until recently, Suzlon, which has emerged out of practically nowhere in the last couple of years to become one of world's biggest manufacturers of wind-power equipment, was thought to have the upper hand in the battle for REpower," comments Mr Leonard. The equation is understood to have changed, though, after the election results in France threw `a spanner in the windmill works'.

Take-over battle

The takeover battle for REpower may be `much more complex than assumed so far and may have a largely political dimension,' apprehends Dr Michael I. Fischer, a Munich-based partner of Reed Smith Richards Butler LLP (www.reedsmith.com) , an international law firm headquartered in London, commenting on the recent media reports about the bidding war.

"However, as long as this driving force is in line with the German takeover law rules and procedures the deal cannot be blamed from a legal point of view, whichever opinion one might have with regard to governmental exertion of influence on economy," he adds.

"Plenty of money is being bet on a breezy future," as Mr Leonard concludes his piece. Only, the `breeze' is now apparently breathing down a political alley, and perhaps gathering steam too.