Hitachi wants to bid for Alstom on Siemens-Mitsubishi team

Hitachi, a Japanese engineering company, wants to follow its partner, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which teamed up with Siemens Electronics in order to bid for the French company Alstom's energy business.

Together, Siemens, Mitsubishi Heavy and Hitachi will form a three-party bid against the US conglomerate, General Electric, which also showed interest in acquiring Alstom.

Three companies bidding together means more money and more flexibility as they could further split Alstom's assets.

The two Japanese companies are mostly interested in Alstom's steam turbine operations while Siemens is bidding for the firm's gas turbine business.

Furthermore, the party of three companies may have a winning hand as the French government is reluctant to selling Alstom to a US-based firm.

Alstom is auctioning out its power arm which makes up for 70 percent of its revenue.