Spanish electricity generator Iberdrola said on Thursday that it was abandoning any thought of bidding for British energy and nuclear group British Energy.
A spokesman for Iberdrola said that the chairman of the company, the second-biggest electricity group in Spain, Ignacio Galan, had made a statement to this effect in New York late on Wednesday.
Galan spoke when he received a prize from the American-Spanish chamber of commerce for being its entrepreneur of the year.
Iberdrola has not made a bid for British Energy, but press reports have said that it might make a bid together with German power group RWE.
The spokesman said that Iberdrola was dropping any such plan because "the price is too high and the financial conditions are not right."
