It's not quite Cadbury. International Power doesn't have a long Quaker heritage, or any Creme Eggs, but it is another British company passing into overseas ownership.
Its deal with GDF Suez, in which the French state is the largest shareholder, makes sense. It creates the world's largest power producer and solves a problem for IP, whose sub-investment grade credit rating is holding back growth.
Having said that, energy supply is a strategic industry and it cannot be ideal that so little of it remains in domestic hands. Only two of the big six home energy suppliers are UK-controlled and nuclear power operator British Energy was sold to French state-controlled operator EDF two years ago.
The French do not take such a relaxed view about their assets. GDF Suez itself was created through a government-brokered mega-merger in 2006 to ward off a hostile bid for Suez from Italy's Enel.
Foreign ownership in itself is not a bad thing – the real problem is the short-termist City culture and the lazy, open-door policy adopted by government that has allowed it to become so prevalent.
The real shame here is not that IP is falling into the hands of the French, it is that the French are probably better at running our power industry than we are.
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