French nuclear power group AREVA said Monday that its board of directors had reviewed bids for the sale of nuclear instrumentation business Canberra and selected the offer from Mirion-Charterhouse.
AREVA is shedding several businesses to “refocus its business on nuclear cycle processes,” the company said. The Wall Street Journal also noted that AREVA needed $7.63 billion to balance its books after several years of losses. Partly to blame is the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami-related disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan that put a huge crimp in the nuclear power industry.
AREVA on Monday said the Canberra deal, about which no sums were disclosed, “will be subject to consultation with Canberra employees' representative bodies” in the coming weeks and that the bid would need to be reviewed by anti-trust regulators.
Mirion is a business group specialized in radiation protection equipment, radiation detection and monitoring systems, as well as dosimetry services. Charterhouse is an independent private equity house operating in Europe with assets under management of $7.35 billion