Kvaerner Faces New EU Subsidy Probe

The European Commission has launched a probe into whether a German subsidiary of Anglo-Norwegian engineering and shipbuilding group Kvaerner Plc received excessive subsidies from Germany. The Commission suspects that the company may have received excessive state aid of around $59.2 million to cover possible losses during the restructuring of its Kvaerner Warnow (KWW) shipyard in eastern Germany. The Commission said it discovered last summer that KWW had given a $199 million loan to its parent company, Kvaerner. The EU executive then started investigating the origin of the money to ensure it did not contain any of the restructuring aid paid out earlier.