Impax Environmental Markets (IEM) will buy back shares sold in the £738m exit tender offer last month at 494.76p each. The investment trust, whose board activist hedge fund Saba is seeking to replace, said all 148.2m shares validly tendered would be accepted and bought by its broker Winterflood next Tuesday. Payments and cheques will be sent to selling shareholders on 22 May.
Gresham House Energy Storage (GRID) has gained export credit agency-backed financing for the battery energy storage systems (BESS) equipment on its first two pipeline projects, Cockenzie and Monet’s Garden, amounting to 297MW at a two-hour duration.
QuotedData’s Richard Williams said: “Export credit-backed funding is commonplace in other infrastructure and energy markets yet is new to UK BESS – and perhaps demonstrates battery storage’s growing status among the infrastructure asset class. Aside from the improved project economics the deal provides GRID, it may set a precedent across the UK BESS sector. If export credit financing becomes more widely available for BESS projects, it could materially lower the cost of capital for the sector and support the next wave of large-scale storage deployment needed to underpin the UK’s energy transition.”
HarbourVest Global Private Equity (HVPE) has appointed Alan Devine, former chair of Patria Private Equity (PPET), to its board as the senior independent director replacing Francesca Barnes who is not standing for re-election at the annual general meeting on 16 July. Chair Ed Warner said his broad experience in financial services and private equity would prove “invaluable” to HVPE, a £2.2bn fund of funds on a 29% share price discount facing its first continuation vote in July. Last month, to secure support for the vote from shareholders who include activists Asset Value Investors and Saba, it proposed to hold a tender offer to let investors sell $400m (£296m) of shares at a price close to net asset value.
Value and Indexed Property Income (VIP), the £85m long lease fund run by Matthew Oakeshott and Louise Cleary at OLIM Property, has converted its £15m undrawn borrowing facility into a fixed seven-and-a-half-year loan maturing in March 2033 on which it will pay 5.9% interest and use the money for acquisitions. Last month the investment trust took in £5.4m from the sale of 2.5m shares from treasury at a premium to net asset value. It has used the money to buy a cinema in Esher, Surrey, for £4.6m at a 9% net initial yield. The four-screen cinema is let to Everyman for a further 19.2 years with RPI-linked rent reviews, subject to a collar and cap of 1% and 5%.
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