Acciona wants to sell renewables arm Acciona Energía for €8.6bn to resolve a split in the Entrecanales family, but only two bidders are currently expected to make bids due to the selling price. This is due to come to a head in October.
In October, Spanish utility Acciona is due to receive final bids for its renewable energy subsidiary Acciona Energía, which operates around 14.7GW of capacity worldwide.
Bidders are likely to include a 75:25 consortium made up of Swedish private equity group EQT and Norwegian sovereign wealth investor Norges Bank; and French investment group Ardian, which would reportedly need to bring in co-investors to support its bid. Acciona plans to pick a preferred bidder by the end of the year.
But this transaction goes beyond a simple takeover. Acciona is considering its options for its renewables subsidiary because a sale could enable it to formalise a split between the two main wings of the company’s founding Entrecanales family. José Entrecanales Ibarra was one of two founders of Spanish construction group Entrecanales y Távora in 1931, which was rebranded as Acciona in 1997 after its merger with fellow construction firm Cubiertas y MZOV. Acciona then entered the renewables sector in 2004.
However, the difficulty for Acciona is that its asking price for Acciona Energía has been too high for some bidders, with the likes of BlackRock and Enel reportedly pulling out of the process due to the valuation.
Acciona is looking to sell the subsidiary with an asking price of €26.70 per share, which implies an equity valuation of €8.6bn and total enterprise value of €11.9bn. This would match the share price when Acciona Energía was listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange in July 2021, even though its current share price is trading at around 15% below that at under €22.50 in late September and it last hit €26.70 in early 2024. Acciona holds a 91.1% stake in Acciona Energía.
Separately, private equity group KKR has pulled out of the race after agreeing a $4.2bn deal to buy the North American operations of EDF Power Solutions in July 2026.
There are a few reasons that Acciona Energía has struggled to attract enough interest on the stock market in recent years. The company has been hit by falling power prices in Spain; a downgrade in its credit rating by Fitch; and difficulties with Acciona Energía’s asset rotation policy.
The company has also disposed of 3GW of renewable energy projects for €3.7bn since 2024 but, while this has propped up profitability in the short term, it has shrunk the group’s asset base and cashflow generation over the longer term.
For example, the company sold a 361MW portfolio of 15 wind farms in Spain in July to Galp New Energies for €432m, which generated an estimate capital gain of €255m; and sold a 64MW portfolio of 17 small hydroelectric plants in Spain to White Summit Capital for €66m in June.
In addition, the group has faced the same headwinds to delivering new projects as other developers, so it has not found it straightforward to replace the capacity of the assets it sold with new projects.
Acciona has been working with Citi and Goldman Sachs on strategic options for Acciona Energía, and it has three main options to choose between.
First, a buyer could increase its offer to a level that satisfies the Spanish utility’s owners. Second, the Entrecanales family will need to accept a bid lower than its €26.70 target, which complicates the family split. Or third, it may not be able to agree either a full or partial disposal of Acciona Energía and would instead need to reintegrate the subsidiary into Acciona. Its decision is likely to be affected by relationships between the two wings of the Entrecanales family.
Entrecanales family dynamics
The other big challenge for Acciona is that the future of Acciona Energía is wrapped up in the family history of the Entrecanales family.
The company that became Acciona was founded by José Entrecanales Ibarra, who had two sons: José Maria and Juan, who became the president and vice president of the company.
José Maria married Blanca Domecq and they had five children, including the company’s current CEO José Manuel. Juan married Mercedes Franco, and they had four children. The fact José Manuel is CEO means that the Entrecanales-Domecq wing of the family has greater operational influence over company strategy, while those in the Entrecanales-Franco branch exist more as shareholders. However, it has been hard for anyone from either side to disentangle from the company following an agreement in 2011, whereby those from either side could only sell shares if they offered them to the other side first.
This pact lasted for 15 years but, in January 2025, they agreed not to extend it, with the result that the Entrecanales-Franco wing would be able to freely dispose of its 29% stake in Acciona. The shareholder pact ended on 14th July 2026 and, in August 2026, the Entrecanales-Franco investment company Tussen de Grachten BV put up a 3% stake for sale and swiftly sold it for between €360m and €380m to get an idea of market interest.
Combined, the family still owns more than 52% of Acciona shares, and both wings of the family have emphasised that any disagreement over how they deal with their stakes leads to minor internal friction rather than a full-out war.
The difficulty for Acciona is that it is holding debts reportedly worth around €8.2bn as of 30th June 2026 compared to its market capitalisation of around €11bn. The result is that it needs its sale price of Acciona Energía to enable it to release a large enough dividend that the Entrecanales-Franco wing of the family could leave the ownership structure.
Therefore, the fact that no bidder has so far been willing to meet Acciona’s valuation of its subsidiary is a setback to the transformation of the company’s structure.
Bidders are aware of the background too, which only reinforces their decisions to offer less than the €8.6bn asking price for Acciona Energía because they believe the family needs to sell.
For now, it appears that all three of the options above are still on the table, and Acciona Energía could be sold – either partially or in full – or reintegrated into the parent group.
We will only know which is most likely when final bids are tabled in mid-October.
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