[9] Following the expansion period, Vattenfall started to divest parts of its business in Denmark and Poland during the years following 2009 in a strategy to focus on three core markets: Sweden, Netherlands, and Germany.

[12] A major part of these write-offs were attributed to Nuon Energy NV, a Netherlands-based utility that Vattenfall purchased at an 89 billion SEK (ca.

[17] In October 2020, it was announced that Gunnar Groebler, senior vice president at Vattenfall responsible for the company's wind power operations, would leave the organisation to join Salzgitter AG.

[18] Magnus Hall, President and CEO from October 2014, decided to leave the company in July 2020 and was succeeded by Anna Borg on November 1, 2020.

Vattenfall has power generation branches in the core markets Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Denmark,[19] and also has operations in Finland.

In Germany, Vattenfall is the electric utility for the states of Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Saxony.

[26] On 30 September 2016, Vattenfall completed the sale of its German lignite facilities to the Czech energy group EPH and its financial partner PPF Investments.

It warned that if it was forced to shut the plants down, there would be serious consequences to Sweden's electricity supply, and argued that the nuclear output tax should be scrapped.

Hearings are taking place at the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Washington, D.C. and Vattenfall is claiming almost €4.7 billion in damages.

[30][6] In March 2021 the German government agreed to a settlement which resulted in €1.425 billion being paid to Vattenfall as part of a larger compensation package for all the utility companies impacted.

Due to these incidents the Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, Peter Harry Carstensen announced that this will be letzter Versuch (their last try) before complete closure of the facility.

Most recently, Vattenfall's efforts to maintain ownership of Hamburg's power grid by lobbying the ruling SPD have drawn criticism.

[42] However, the Senate of Berlin promised to match the citizens' initiative's key claim, regardless of the referendum's outcome: to transfer all end-user operations, which were owned by Vattenfall at the time, to a public utility company.