The nationalised German vitality importer Uniper has pledged to grow to be worthwhile once more even because it introduced a internet lack of €19bn final yr after Vladimir Putin reduce Europe’s provides of Russian gasoline.

The corporate, which is 99 per cent owned by the German authorities after an emergency bailout final yr, was as soon as Europe’s largest importer of pure gasoline from Gazprom. But it surely started racking up enormous losses after Moscow diminished provides to Germany by means of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, prompting fears that it might collapse.

Klaus-Dieter Maubach, the chief government, stated that Uniper was “at its core a powerful firm that has efficiently obtained by means of essentially the most tough yr in its historical past”.

Maubach, who has introduced that he’ll depart the corporate, stated that the duty of his successors could be “to proceed to develop Uniper and make it worthwhile once more”.

He supplied no element of how the corporate deliberate to do this after the conflict in Ukraine upended its enterprise mannequin.

However Uniper stated that the problem of changing Russian gasoline could be overcome by the tip of 2024 on the newest, and promised to section out monetary assist from the German state.

Though the €19.1bn internet loss is about half the €40bn loss the corporate had initially predicted because of decrease than anticipated prices for changing Russian gasoline, the determine remains to be huge — and underlines the challenges dealing with an organization whose bailout by German taxpayers is about to price as a lot as €51bn.

Beneath strict circumstances set out by the EU when it accepted final yr’s authorities bailout, the corporate agreed to divest a string of belongings, dedicated to not broaden its market place in gross sales and to grant opponents entry to its transport and storage capacities.