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VATTENFALL

Sweden raps Vattenfall over recent scandals

Following a wave of scandals surrounding Vattenfall, the Swedish government has demanded concrete measures be taken by the board of the state-owned nuclear operator.

Published: 23 July 2009 09:34 CEST
Sweden raps Vattenfall over recent scandals

“Vattenfall has deficiencies in its processes and its follow-up. As a state owner and on behalf of the Swedish people, we are seriously concerned about the situation and that it is damaging the company,” Ola Alterå, state secretary at the Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications (Näringsdepartementet), told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

Alterå said that although the Swedish government ultimately has confidence in Vattenfall, there remains a lot of work ahead for the board.

The required measures include restoring brand confidence, improving the security culture, create a focus on profitability as well as play a leading role in the changeover to renewable energy in order to help the European Union (EU) meet its climate goals by the year 2020.

Alterå added that these goals are closely interrelated.

On Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticised Vattenfall over a series of problems at Krümmel, an ageing reactor near Hamburg that has become an issue in the German elections.

Earlier this month, nuclear officials ruled to place Vattenfall’s Ringhals plant in southwestern Sweden under observation following several security-related incidents.

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VATTENFALL

Swedish energy firm racks up giant losses

UPDATED: Swedish energy giant Vattenfall recorded losses amounting to nearly 29 billion kronor ($3.4 billion) on Tuesday as the company continued its battle against increasingly tough market conditions.

Published: 21 July 2015 10:43 CEST
Updated: 21 July 2015 12:17 CEST
Swedish energy firm racks up giant losses
Vattenfall chief executive Magnus Hall on Tuesday. Photo: Fredrik Persson/TT

Hit by asset write-down charges worth 36 billion kronor, Sweden's Vattenfall reported a net loss of 28.812 billion kronor in the second quarter of the year, a huge drop from 2.3 billion kronor in the same period in 2014.

The state-owned energy firm, a major provider of electricity in northern Europe, has been struggling to improve profits for several years, suffering from weak demand and plunging electricity prices.

It attributed 17 billion kronor of the total asset write-downs to the same fall in profits which led to a shock announcement earlier this year that it planned to close Ringhals 1 and 2 in south-western Sweden.

It said at the time that the two reactors were too costly to keep in production until 2025 as previously planned.

“This is of course very negative but unfortunately reflects the reality we're living in,” said its chief executive Magnus Hall in a statement on Tuesday morning.

It also wrote down an additional 15 billion kronor on its lignite, or brown coal, assets in Germany.

Earlier this year Vattenfall announced that 1,000 workers were being let go as part of a series of bids to curb losses, including speeding up the sale of the German plants.

It reported a total turnover of 36.1 billion kronor in the second quarter of 2015 on Tuesday, down from 36.6 billion in the same period last year.

Hall said that the work to tighten the belt was continuing “to identify further reductions in costs”.

Since the Vattenfall Group bought energy giant Nuon in 2009, a deal which has been hotly debated in Sweden, the firm's assets have been written down by over 52 billion kronor. 

Many energy providers in Europe have made huge asset write-downs in the last two years because of weak demand for electricity against a background of sluggish economic activity.

They have also been caught out by the US shale energy boom, which has pushed down the price of coal for power generation, undermining the profitability of new gas-powered plants and some investment programmes.

Vattenfall employs more than 30,000 and has operations in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain.