The buyer is Central Puerto, from the Bemberg family, where Nicolas Caputo was also. In March, he will try to sell Edesur.
Enel, the Italian company that owns Edesur, closed the sale of its generation business. The buyer is Central Puerto. It stays with the Costanera and Dock Sud plants. It becomes the main generator in the country. It’s a $102 million business. In the buyer, the Bemberg family and Nicolás Caputo stand out, who were part of the company.
The Italian Enel was heavily criticized by the government for the power outages over the weekend. A sector of the ruling party asked that the concession be removed, but the Minister of Economy -Sergio Massa- finally decided on a fine of $1,000 million. and expedite an audit that was already underway.
“Enel Argentina signed and closed the sale agreement to the energy company Central Puerto of the group’s 75.7% stake in the thermal generation company Enel Generación Costanera,” the selling company reported.
Central Puerto, which was already a partner of Enel in the generation business, will pay US$48 million for the Costanera plant and US$56 million for Dock Sud. In this way, it will have full control of them.
“It is part of the expansion strategy promoted by the main shareholders (Guillermo Reca, the Miguens-Bemberg family and Eduardo Escassany),” Central Puerto explained in a statement.
Central Puerto already generates 4,809 MW, and will add 2,305 MW with this operation. In total, it will have 7,100 MW, and it will be the most important electricity generator in the country. It will have a participation of 17% of the country’s total generation power. That number will increase when the sale of Dock Sud, scheduled for a second stage, is closed.
“The value of Central Costanera does not lie solely in the machines, but also in what the unified management of generation assets represents, in which Central Puerto has extensive technical and operational experience,” according to Gabriel Ures, commercial director of Central Puerto.
In the market it was believed that Nicolás Caputo -a close friend of former President Mauricio Macri- was one of the shareholders of Central Puerto. But the businessman reported that he got rid of his shares in Sadesa. This company is the one that owns Central Puerto.
Sadesa also has a part of Distrilec, the company that controls Edesur. But 75% of the distributor is in the hands of Enel Italia.
Sadesa is mentioned as interested in buying Edesur. Enel will move forward with that transaction by March. There is a national businessman who is probing the field of politics to see if an offer from him would have obstacles.
Enel’s departure from Argentina is part of a divestment process in several countries.
Francesco Starace, CEO of Italy’s Enel, participated in a panel at Harvard in January. There they asked him regarding leaving Argentina and his definition was emphatic. “They have the most bizarre regulation in the world,” he said.
“It can’t be done that way,” observed the Italian executive. “We see that in the future this will work with local investors,” he added.
Central Costanera is located in the City of Buenos Aires, reaches almost 6% participation in the total installed capacity of SADI and generates the energy demanded by 3.5 million homes throughout the country.
The total consideration for the sale of Enel’s participation in the two companies amounts to US$102 million.
“Enel Dock Sud is a gas-fired power plant located in the Avellaneda district of Buenos Aires, with an installed capacity of 870 MW,” the sellers specified.
The Miguens-Bemberg family once owned the Quilmes brewery, which it sold to Brahma. With the money received, he joined Central Puerto, where Escassany -former head of Banco de Galicia- and Miguel Reca, a specialist in the electricity business, considered the “brains” of the company, were already present.
After the closing of this operation, Osvaldo Reca was appointed as the new president of Central Costanera.
