Siemens Energy’s leadership decided to go ahead with a 4 billion euro ($4.34 billion) bid – which later backfired over faulty components – based on a “sound information basis”, Christian Bruch told shareholders at the group’s annual general meeting.
Earlier, shareholders had sharply criticised the company’s leadership for the botched deal, which has thrown the group into its biggest crisis to date and essentially forced it to ask for billions of euros in state-backed guarantees to do its business.
Bruch said the quality issues at Siemens Gamesa’s onshore business, which emerged in June 2023, surfaced on the basis of empirical usage data of newer turbines that had not been available at the time of the takeover a year earlier.
The crisis and its consequences have raised questions over whether onshore wind should still be part of the company, given the business has caused billions of euros of losses over the past years.
Bruch said wind was a core part of the company and that there were currently no talks to sell it, but added that unless the business did not earn the required returns over the medium-term “we’re not the best owners”.
($1 = 0.9215 euros)
Reporting by Christoph Steitz and Tom Kaeckenhoff; Editing by Miranda Murray and David Evans – Reuters
