Italy's banks tap ECB for €50bn

Italy's banks, led by UniCredit, were the biggest users of the special three-year funding mechanism launched by the European Central Bank in December, according to a new report.

UniCredit - Italy's biggest bank by assets - took €12.5bn of three-year money under the facility, closely followed by Intesa Sanpaolo, with €12bn, and Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which took €10bn, the report from analysts at Morgan Stanley says.

German offshore wind specialist Bard puts itself up for sale
(31 August 2011)

Although the company declines to offer further details, it is understood to be in discussions with both Asian and European players and hoping to conclude a sale by spring 2012. Late last year, Bard founder Arngolt Bekker - the Kazakh-born German oil magnate who decided to plough much of his fortune into offshore wind - retired from the company and transferred his family's near-90% stake into a new entity called Bard Asset Management.

Bard is an unusual presence in its sector. Founded in 2006, the company is as close as an offshore wind company can get to vertical integration, with production facilities for its own 5MW turbines, blades and tripod foundations; its own jack-up installation vessel, known as the Wind Lift 1; and a raft of projects under development in the German North Sea.

The company's state-of-the-art production facilities on the North Sea coast in Emden and Cuxhaven are viewed as one of its key assets, given the recent acceleration of Germany's offshore wind program me.

Since entering construction in March 2010, the company's flagship project, the 400MW Bard Offshore 1, has faced delays. To date, 16 of the planned 80 turbines have been installed, along with 40 foundations.

Stress on the High Seas: Germany's Wind Power Revolution in the Doldrums - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

...the expansion of the country's offshore wind farms in particular, which Minister Röttgen considers of paramount importance, is constantly beset by new problems.

On December 6 he received an urgent message from Leonhard Birnbaum, RWE's chief commercial officer, and Fritz Vahrenholt, who heads up the company's renewables division. The two men expressed their serious concern that "the timely realization of grid links" for offshore wind farms had become "dramatically problematic," thus seriously jeopardizing the expansion of the sector and therefore also the government's plans. "This development puts us in an extremely difficult position," the two RWE managers wrote.

This was preceded by a similar letter from TenneT, one of the grid operators; albeit that constituted lobbying for either a limitation of the right for grid access or state help in adapting the network. RWE's problem discussed by Spiegel happens to be with TenneT, too (which BTW is a Dutch grid company that bought E.on's grid operations in Germany).

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}