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Tractebel North America is looking to raise $1.6 billion through a seven-year non-recourse financing package that will be syndicated on a club basis. Lenders signing up to the program will be asked to commit to four separate loans backing four different power plant projects.

* State-owned Electricite de France won permission from the European Commission on Friday to buy U.K. utilty Seeboard from American Electric Power in a $2.1 billion deal. EdF will pay $990 million in cash, as well as assuming $1.07 billion of debt and power purchase liabilities of $148 million from AEP of Columbus, Ohio (Reuters, 7/29).

Electricité de France has snubbed Goldman Sachs, its one-time advisor of choice, by omitting it from its seven-strong investment banking shortlist to advise on its upcoming privatization and initial public offering. Bankers in Paris and London say NM Rothschild has already been retained and add Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Credit Lyonnais, Merrill Lynch, Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, Credit Suisse First Boston and J.P. Morgan have been put on a shortlist. The seven bidders were required to file proposals on July 18 and EdF is expected to select its advisory team by Aug 2, notes one banker. If EdF only selects one more adviser this is likely to be an international bank, says another banker, adding that Deutsche Bank is in pole position (PFR, 7/15).

Southern Power emerged from last week's IPP sector carnage with plans to add another 1,800 MW to its competitive generation push and will be looking to tap bank financing to fund the projects. That the company is in a position to buck the latest downward trend and provide bankers with a chance to earn fees is a testament to its blue chip status as the nonregulated arm of Southern Co. The IPP has been building out its generation portfolio via a $850 million corporate construction revolver set up last year (PFR, 10/8), but the three-year facility will mature before the new plants come on line in 2005. The additions are a 600 MW third unit at its Goat Rock facility--which was recently renamed Plant Franklin--and two units amounting to 1,240 MW planned for the Plant McIntosh facility near Savannah, Ga.

InterGen, a Burlington, Mass.-based independent power producer, is closing down its roughly 50-strong London operation as part of plans to shift its regional focus away from developing generation projects to consolidating its portfolio of European and Middle Eastern power plants. One banker says the change of tack also has led the company to put on ice plans to develop its pipeline of early-stage projects in Germany, Spain and Italy. Sarah Webster, an InterGen spokeswoman in Burlington, confirmed in a voicemail message it is closing down the London office, but could not be reached for further comment by press time.

Following is a directory of ongoing generation asset sales. The accuracy of the information, which is derived from many sources, is deemed reliable but cannot be guaranteed. To report new auctions or changes in the status of a sale, please call Will Ainger, managing editor, at (44-20) 7303-1735 or e-mail wainger@euromoneyplc.com .

Wilmington, Del.-based Conectiv has secured several bids for 740 MW of fossil fuel-fired base-load power plants in the New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland (PJM) power pool and hopes to seal a sale by the end of August, says a New York banker close to the matter. He declined to reveal the interested parties or the size of the bids tabled.

Sacramento Municipal Utility District plans to tap the bond mart this week with a $137 million offering of fixed-rate electric revenue refunding bonds and has earmarked the proceeds to take out a variety of paper issued in 1992 and 1993. Early last week Larry Stark, assistant treasurer at SMUD, told PFR the utility had yet to determine the exact tranches of early 1990s debt it plans to take out, nor had it finalized the exact structure of the new offering.

Gareth Lewis-Davies, director in Lehman Brothers' London-based power and utility equity research team, left the bank earlier this month to join oil giant BP as an oil analyst. Jonathan Mirrlees-Black, director, says both he and Lewis-Davies shared coverage of the U.K. power, water and gas sector, but consolidation across the market means that he will be able to cover the sector alone going forward. Lewis-Davies could not be reached for comment.

American Electric Power and its quartet of lead banks hope to seal GBP450 million ($681 million) of project debt this September to refinance its acquisition of two U.K. coal-fired plants, Fiddler's Ferry and Ferrybridge, it bought last summer.