, Columnist
Veolia Should Avoid a $3.5 Billion Suez Crisis
A French bid to build an environmental empire in a market depressed by the pandemic deserves a fatter premium.
Cleaning up?
Photographer: Chris J. Ratcliffe/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
A 19% one-day jump in a company’s stock price in the current pandemic-driven recession is the kind of thing you’d expect from the U.S. tech sector, not the staid world of European utilities.
Still, that’s what France’s Suez SA, whose business is water treatment and waste management, delivered on Monday after rival Veolia Environnement SA offered more than 2.9 billion euros ($3.5 billion) for 29.9% of the firm.