The NZ Government offered for sale its cornerstone state-owned generator to encourage the establishment of a fully functioning market-based energy sector able to deliver transparent market-based price signals, stimulate appropriate infrastructure investment, energy conservation, energy demand response, and offer consumers real choice and control. The AES Corporation, a global power company with over $11 Billion in annual revenue, that owns and operates a diverse portfolio of electricity generation and distribution businesses in over 15 countries worldwide, sought market entry into NZ through successful acquisition of the state-owned generator.
As bid managers for AES, our team of experts prepared a strategic energy sector plan identifying the mechanisms of the electricity market, the projected long term energy demand, an analysis of various energy sector participants across the whole value chain, an analysis by their competitiveness, identification of regulatory barriers and ownership (private sector, local-regional-national government, investment entities), and future pricing through the analysis of close substitutes. They then developed a strategic business plan analysis of the target company, Contact Energy, with analysis of the functional business plans of marketing, operations, HR, financial and R&D). This analysis then enabled our team to develop financing models and capital repatriation, capacity development plans for the management of portfolio of assets, and Regulatory Risk Management and Reporting Plan arising from the regulation of the generation market by the New Zealand Commerce Commission and to plan for the issues around dealing with government energy sector and anti-competition regulators.
A highly competitive bid was developed for the AES Corporation, which while unsuccessful, introduced an international corporate to NZ that shared a passion to help meet the world’s current and increasing energy needs, while providing communities and countries the opportunity for economic growth due to the availability of reliable, affordable electric power.