Europe, you need electrical, not financial engineers (like me)

A couple of years ago when the hundred-year-old private electric utility company that served my hometown (a South American city) was taken over by an international player, it became within a short time leveraged up to its hilt in debt, and I suspect also poison pills and golden parachutes, and I knew we were heading into the wrong direction. When I now read about all the consolidations in Europe, which can only distance consumers from their day-to-day local electrical engineers and place their needs in some distant foreign trading rooms, I feel the same, although clearly, if Europe is now an all-of-the-same Europe, I could be wrong. What I do know, though, is that all those high valuations paid by financial wizards purchasing utilities will, sooner or later, need to be repaid by all those European electricity consumers who are currently living in blissful ignorance.

Sent to FT, September 8, 2005