EON, RWE Said to Sell Nuclear JV for About $967 Million

EON AG (EOAN) and RWE AG (RWE), Germany’s two largest utilities, are set to sell their U.K. venture Horizon Nuclear Power to Japan’s Hitachi Ltd. (6501) for about 600 million pounds ($967 million), people familiar with the matter said.

The sale for the venture with government backing to build plants in Wales and western England may be signed in the next few days, according to two people, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private. An announcement may come on Oct. 30, one of the people said.

The deal would be a boost for the U.K. government, which is seeking to spur new reactors to replace aging power plants, upgrade grids and cut pollution at a cost of 110 billion pounds. EON and RWE decided to sell Horizon after Germany said it will close all of its reactors following last year’s disaster in Japan, prompting the utilities to pull out of the nuclear industry worldwide. That left the U.K. as one of only three western European nations pursuing new reactors.

Keisaku Shibatani, a spokesman for Hitachi, said the company had put in a bid and declined to comment further. Officials at RWE and EON declined to comment. An official at the U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change said that while the deal was a commercial matter for RWE and EON, there had been strong interest in buying Horizon.

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