Scottish flavour to Southern bid race
Scottish & Southern Energy has entered the £4bn race to buy Southern Water as part of the consortium backed by US investment bank Goldman Sachs.
SSE is thought to be only a minor contributor to the equity for the bid, but it could provide operating and management expertise.
It has already started to look at providing water services to new housing and industrial developments and has an overlap of staff and skills with Southern.
SSE became more interested after the credit crunch brought down the expected price for Southern from £6bn.
Financial Mail understands Goldman attempted to pre-empt the auction by demanding exclusive negotiations for its team, which also includes American industrial powerhouse GE plus Prudential, Babcock & Brown and Deutsche Bank's Rreef infrastructure fund.
The Goldman team is keen to get a UK water asset after failing to find a partner to break up Pennon - formerly South West Water - from its waste management firm.
Its opposition for Southern comes from Australian bankers Macquarie and a group with US investment bank JPMorgan.
While Axa has joined the Morgan Stanley consortium together with public pension plan manager for Canada's Quebec Province, and Victorian Funds Management Corporation, which handles investments for the Australian state of Victoria.
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