The Danish energy company Ørsted (formerly known as DONG Energy) has decided to suspend the sale of its Danish power distribution and residential customer businesses, after the Danish Ministry of Finance has retrieved any political support for the transaction. However, the assets will still be held for sale and separation from the main business may take place in the future.
Ørsted's residential customer business sells electricity to approximately 733,000 customers and gas to approximately 91,000 customers. The power distribution subsidiary (Radius) has about 1 million customers in the Copenhagen area, North Zealand and parts of central Zealand. It manages a power distribution grid of approximately 19,000 km.
Ørsted had announced the sales process in June 2018. At the time, the transaction was evaluated at DKK8bn-DKK13bn (€1.07bn-€1.74bn). The sales would allow the company to focus on its renewable power generation activities and would contribute to its DKK 200bn (€27bn) investment plans. Wind energy has become the key business unit in the company's portfolio and is scheduled to increase up to 6.5 GW by 2020 from the current 3 GW. In October 2017, Ørsted already divested its upstream oil and gas business (Dong E&P) to the UK-based petrochemical company INEOS and took advantage of this opportunity to rebrand itself.