Today the Swedish parliament is in a rush to bail out speculating power producers with a €25 billion financial guarantee. It was only on Friday Sept. 2, the Swedish government came up with this scheme, which is to be rushed through the parliament in only one day as an extra budget to be ready before the electric power market closes at 6 p.m. In Finland the Fortum group of companies needs a bailout equivalent to €5-10 billion. “This (gas crisis) has had the ingredients for a kind of a Lehman Brothers of energy industry,” Finnish Economic Affairs Minister Mika Lintila said on Sept. 4. And Austria announced a €2 billion bailout of its biggest energy company, Wien Energie, which Chancellor Karl Nehammer called “an extraordinary rescue measure.” Germany’s biggest energy company Uniper, owned by the Fortum Group and already bailed out with €15 billion of loans/stock purchases in late July, has used up its credit line already and needs more billions.
This emergency “coup” by the Swedish government was to avoid the electric power crisis becoming a financial crisis. The government extends the guarantee of SEK250 billion ($23 billion) to the power companies in the Nordic countries including the Baltic countries, so they will have the liquidity necessary to deliver to the Nasdaq Clearing which is a so-called CCP (central clearing counterparty) for the electric power market. In the coming two weeks the other Nordic countries are supposed to provide their own guarantees to their power companies, relieving Sweden from that financial position.
