GE wins EU approval to buy Alstom’s power unit
By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) – General Electric won European Union antitrust clearance on Tuesday to buy Alstom's power unit after agreeing to sell some of the French company's assets to Italian competitor Ansaldo Energia. The European Commission said the concessions allayed its earlier concerns that the 12.4-billion-euro ($13.9 billion) deal would reduce competition to two major players, namely the merged company and Germany's Siemens . GE will divest Alstom's large turbine product line and the technology it is developing for very large turbines to Ansaldo, which is 40 percent owned by Italian state-backed investment fund Fondo Strategico Italiano and another 40 percent by China's Shanghai Electric .