The employee shareholders of EDF have threatened to file a complaint against the State for its decisions concerning the energy company and their ‘spoliating’ consequences for the shareholders.
A way of putting pressure to defend their interests on the eve of the announcement of the government’s plan to renationalise the group 100%.
‘The Energie en actions association (…) announces that it is filing a criminal complaint with a civil action against the State as the majority shareholder of EDF for putting the company in difficulty in disregard of the social interest of it and of the interests of its minority shareholders, because of reckless and despoiling decisions”, indicates this association in a press release which AFP learned on Monday.
‘The seriousness of the damage inflicted on the company is illustrated by the dizzying fall in the value of the share, the price of which fell from 32 euros when the capital was opened to the public at the end of 2005 to 7.4 euros at the time of the declaration on July 6, 2022 by the Prime Minister that the government wanted to hold 100% of the capital of EDF’ (against 84% currently), argues the association, which also points to ‘the no less dizzying increase in the indebtedness’.
‘The purpose is to hold the State up to its responsibilities. It was he who went to seek savers and employees, former employees, and it was he who put the company in difficulty and who would like to buy it back at a low price, ‘said Hervé Chefdeville, secretary general to AFP. of the association Energie en actions.
Main grievance of the association, ‘the sale, at a price below production costs, to competitors of at least a quarter of EDF’s nuclear electricity production (100 TWh), according to the so-called Arenh mechanism ‘ (Regulated access to historic nuclear electricity), set up in 2010 to avoid prosecution by the European Commission, under the Nome law, reforming the electricity market in France.
Against a cheap buyout
This mechanism allows EDF to sell a quarter of the electricity produced by its nuclear power plants to its competitors, the idea being to allow new energy suppliers to benefit from the low production costs of the French nuclear fleet.
The association also points to the shutdown ‘for purely political reasons’ of the two reactors at the Fessenheim power plant in Alsace.
‘The fall in prices results for a very large part from the decisions that the State has taken in the general interest. It is not a question of criticizing these decisions, but of noting that it was incompatible with the governance and the rules of a private company, therefore the shareholders were victims of decisions which were not in accordance with their interest. ‘, commented for her part Colette Neuville, president of the Association for the Defense of Minority Shareholders, mandated by some in this file.
She wants the state to return to shareholders 32 euros per share, the price of the share at the time of the IPO.
‘Today the State must be accountable for the management exercised as ultra-majority shareholder of the company, management which has the consequence of seriously robbing very many savers’, concludes the association, which judges that the State ‘treats EDF as a simple tool of its policies to the point of putting it in great difficulty, in flagrant illegality’.
The title of EDF was suspended last Wednesday on the Paris Stock Exchange, the time to allow the State to specify, at the latest Tuesday before the opening of the Paris Stock Exchange, the terms of the renationalization of the energy company announced in early July.
/ATS