Siemens and Mitsubishi up offer for Alstom

Siemens and Mitsubishi upped their offer for France's power-to-rail group Alstom on Friday, as they battled with General Electric to win the government's backing to buy the French conglomerate.

Siemens and Mitsubishi upped their offer for France's power-to-rail group Alstom on Friday, as they battled with General Electric to win the government's backing to buy the French conglomerate.

The new offer -- announced a day after GE sweetened its rival bid -- increases the valuation of Alstom's energy division by 400 million euros to 14.6 billion euros and ups the cash contribution by 1.2 billion euros to 8.2 billion euros, the groups said in a statement.