Uniper

Uniper SE is a German multinational energy company based in Düsseldorf, Germany, which has been a state-owned enterprise since late 2022. It is one of the biggest energy companies by revenue in Europe. The name of the company is a portmanteau of "unique" and "performance", which was given by long-term employee Gregor Recke. Uniper was formed by the separation of E.ON's fossil fuel assets into a separate company that began operating on 1 January 2016. In 2019, the company employed about 6,800 people in over 40 countries. In 2018, around one-third of the employees were based in Germany. Until 2022, it owned a subsidiary company in Russia called Unipro. Uniper was listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The company has faced criticism for opening new coal-fueled power plants in Germany as recently as May 2020. Uniper was one of the financiers of the Nord Stream 2 project, which the German government suspended two days before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The company was nationalised in December 2022 as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and consequent Russian termination in August 2022 of gas supply in the NordStream pipelines, following which Uniper needed to purchase gas on the spot market at a great premium and ran out of cash in this way.