Essent and Nuon abandon Dutch energy merger

The leading Dutch energy companies Essent and Nuon have announced that they are abandoning their plans to merge. It had previously been hinted that the merger was facing significant obstacles.

The merging parties were not able to agree on a final valuation. In addition, the Dutch competition authoritiy, NMa, had raised concerns about possible anticompetitive effects of the merger. In its assessment of the merger, the NMa had drawn extensively on economic analysis undertaken by Frontier (Cologne and London) on behalf of Centrica and another interested party.