U.S. company General Electric Co. is in talks to buy Alstom SA, the French builder of trains and power plants, people with knowledge of the matter said, in what would be GE’s biggest acquisition ever.
Alstom is a big player in the global geothermal energy market. Recently, Alstom has announced buying an interest in a Turkish geothermal energy company and has been tapped to build the 25 MWe Los Humeros III - Phase A geothermal plant in Mexico.
An agreement may be announced as early as next week, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. The U.S. company may pay more than $13 billion for Alstom, one of the people said. That would be about 25 percent more than its current market value. Alstom surged as much as 18 percent in Paris trading today, the biggest jump since 2004.
