Patrick Hosking, Financial Editor, The Times, Saturday December 23 2023:
A London-listed specialist in wind and solar farms has sparked a storm in the renewable energy sector with a hostile £745 million bid for a smaller rival.
Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust disclosed that earlier private approaches to Aquila European Renewables had been rejected three times and that therefore it was going public with its proposal to combine the two companies…
Shares in the London-listed Aquila European Renewables rose by 7.3 per cent to ¾p after the company confirmed it had received “unsolicited proposals” and would consider the approach amid a wider review of its options in the new year…
The battle for the investment mandate potentially pitches Octopus Energy Generation, the London-based fund manager with £6 billion under management and part of the wider Octopus energy group, against the Hamburg-based Aquila Capital, which manages €14.7 billion of renewable assets…
Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust is valued at about £506 million, while Aquila European Renewables weighs in at around £263 million. The terms of any deal would be struck on a so-called formula asset value basis, the standard way in which investment trusts combine…
Matthew Read, a senior analyst at QuotedData, said that “Aquila European Renewables “is a good size and has a decent track record of performance, so it should be able to expand again once markets settle. Given their different focuses, we’re yet to be convinced that merging these different strategies into one fund makes sense at the current time.”
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