Stranded

摘要

There are many good ways to do pri-vatisation. The Polish government's long attempt to sell the "G8" cluster of power distributors in central and northern Poland is not one of them. After tempting some global heavyweights of the electricity business, such as Germany's E.ON, the treasury then scared them off by driving too hard a bargain. This left it with a solitary, meagre bid, from Jan Kulczyk, Poland's richest entrepreneur, who, according to some distrustful parliamentarians, may have leaned on Poland's prime minister to keep the auction alive. On January 27th, NIK, Poland's national auditor, called for the G8 sale to be suspended as part of its wholesale review of the restructuring of the electricity industry.