Veolia, French utility group, has agreed to sell the UK waste business of Suez to Macquarie, a private equity group from Australia, for 2.4 billion euros. Veolia, which agreed a deal of 13 billion euros to buy its smaller rival of France, has been disposing of parts of Suez in number of international markets to clear anti-trust concerns.
Estelle Brachlianoff, chief executive of Veolia, said the following the transaction, Veolia will remain a major player in the waste industry in the United Kingdom, and in the environmental services market in the region.
The deal follows objections raised by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of the United Kingdom after the combination of the two biggest waste and water groups in the world. In May 2022, the CMA said that the merger of the businesses of these two companies in the United Kingdom had the risk of driving up council bills by cutting the choice of collection providers and resulting in unwanted treatment.
Estelle Brachlianoff also said she was very confident that Veolia would gain regulatory approval for the deal, and she added that the company needed to make one smaller asset sale in the industrial water business in the United Kingdom.
