Genoa provides a good example of the various stages of transformation of a municipal undertaking first into an arm's length company, owned by the council, and then a sale of shares to private investors. The city council decided in 1995 to transform the utility into a joint stock company, and gave it the ambitious name of Azienda Mediteraneo del Gaz e Acqua (AMGA). In 1996 they decided to sell 49% of the shares in AMGA, which went to private and institutional investors (the largest UK institutional investment company, Mercury Asset Management, has acquired 11.6%). AMGA is not, therefore, a joint venture between Genoa and a multinational company.

AMGA made an unsuccessful takeover bid for a privately owned water company which operates in the Genoa area, Acquedotto De Ferrari Galliera. The bid was blocked by a consortium of major shareholders, which included multinationals Generale des Eaux (owning 16.58% of shares) and Pirelli (8.36%) as well as a further 43% held by Italian private investors. The bid was part of AMGA's plan to rationalise and restructure the provision of water in Genoa and the surrounding region of Liguria, which is currently divided between a number of public and private utilities, and so AMGA was not interested in a minority investment.

As well as bidding for a private company, AMGA has also attempted to obtain contracts to run water services in other cities, and set up a joint venture with Ventimiglia (also in the Liguria region). This too was resisted by its private sector competitors, who brought a court case attempting to block these activities on the grounds that AMGA could not legally operate outside Genoa. The outcome is unclear. A court ruling on this in May 1997 was suspended for 6 months. The issue is whether the liberalised market for water supply in Italy is to be open only to the multinationals: the chair of AMGA said that if they lost the court case, it "would mean entrusting half of Italy, not to private enterprise but to foreign groups".

AEM Milan and Amga have formed a joint venture with the Russian company Lengaz to rebuild the methane gas network of St Petersburg (Russia).

Kommunedata is a computer services company owned by the Danish local authority associations. It was set up in 1972. It employs over 2,000 staff, and is one of the biggest IT companies in Denmark. It is the main supplier of IT solutions and services for the public sector, covering healthcare systems, payroll, finance, pensions and procurement. It also does work for the private sector where appropriate, and undertakes international work for the European Commission, sometimes in consortia with private IT companies.

In 1997 it was converted into a limited company. The reason given for this was that "The company is in a market which is characterised by increasing competition, rapid technological development and more comprehensive and individual customer requirements". At the same time Kommunedata is opening its own operations: "Kommunedata will readjust from almost 100% in-house development to becoming a systems integrator where parts of the solution will be supplied by partners or sub-contractors. Kommunedata’s function will thus increasingly involve integration of standard products with field-specific Kommunedata solutions."

"Organisational developments which may lead to broad cooperation in the electricity industry may augur changes for Vienna's municipal utility and the city's gas activities. The present structure of Wiener Stadtwerke, responsible for electricity, public transport and burials as well as gas, is that of a department and it has no overriding authority of its own. For some time, various political groups have called on the city to reorganise Stadtwerke into one or more organisations with legal status; all that has happened is that the city has redesignated the operative units such as WienGas for gas operations, WienStrom for electricity. EU pressures for market deregulation are likely finally to bring about the reorganisation. Stadtwerke has agreed to participate in a consortium which will bid for a 24.5% share in Obersterreichische Kraftwerke (OKA), the Upper Austrian regional utility (IGR 325/17), but to do so expeditiously would require a legal form less broad than that of a city department. While the city would retain control over a reorganised utility, the separate departments - at least gas and electricity - would probably be set up as individual corporations with attendant privatisation potential. A target date of 1998 has been suggested for the move". (International Gas Report 5/9/97)