ABB AND ALSTOM NOTIFY COMMISSION OF ENERGY SECTOR JOINT VENTURE.

Plans announced six weeks ago by the Swiss-Swedish engineering group Asea Brown Boveri and French industrial conglomerate Alstom to merge their power generation businesses into a 50/50 joint company, to be called ABB Alstom Power NV, have now been formally notified to the European Commission's Merger Task Force. The two companies, which both supply equipment for power generation, transmission, generation and automation, notified the Commission of their proposed joint venture on May 5. The new company will comprise all of ABB's power generation segment, excluding its nuclear activities - mainly fuel processing and service and its service and financing-based distributed power business. And it will embrace all of Alstom's energy sector activities, including gas turbines, but excluding the General...