STUTTGART (dpa-AFX) - Savings banks president Peter Schneider has reiterated his association's interest in acquiring a stake in electricity grid operator Transnet BW. To his knowledge, the savings banks in the southwest are on the shortlist for a possible bid by parent company EnBW, Schneider said in Stuttgart on Thursday. The facility is "highly interesting" and primarily serves customer demand for "green" financial products, he said.

EnBW plans to sell 49.9 percent of Transnet BW. One half of it is to go to the state-owned KfW Bank, while EnBW launched a bidding process for the other half. Transnet's extra-high voltage network, which is more than 3,000 kilometers long, is one of a total of four transmission networks in Germany. Wind power is to be transported from the north to the south of the country on these electricity highways.

The savings banks in the southwest currently manage 124 billion euros in deposits, Schneider said. So it makes sense to participate in projects "in the tropical rainforest" rather than from the business sector, he said. "I am passionately of the opinion: The financial group as a public-law financial group must participate in the transformation," said Schneider./dhu/DP/zb