As part of a new strategic course, Evonik will be developed from a conglomerate into a globally leading specialty chemicals company in the coming years, a spokeswoman for the company told Reuters recently. Evonik, owned by the government-controlled RAG foundation and private equity firm CVC, already makes about three quarters of its total revenue from chemicals. It also builds and operates power plants and manages a real estate portfolio. Both the real estate and the energy unit will be operated as largely independent holdings, the spokeswoman for Evonik said.
Evonik is seeking one or several partners for its energy business, who could either invest in individual projects or in the company as a whole. The spokeswoman did not say what Evonik planned for its real estate business beyond merging it with housing company THS, a 50-50 joint venture with trade union IG BCE. Germany daily Handelsblatt earlier cited sources close to Evonik's supervisory board as saying that Evonik aimed to launch an initial public offering of the real estate business by the end of 2011.
The merger will create a new entity managing 130,000 apartments and generating €800 million of annual revenues. Germany daily Financial Times Deutschland said those apartments are valued at about €5-6 billion, based on previous divestments. Reports had surfaced in September saying that Evonik planned to break up its businesses to concentrate on chemicals, but Evonik had denied the reports at the time. The RAG foundation, which owns about three quarters of Evonik, had planned an IPO of Evonik as a whole but had scrapped that plan during the global economic crisis. It has said it still aims for an IPO by 2013 to finance the winding down of the company's coal-mining operations as Evonik transfers responsibility for its coal mining to the German government.