Alinda Capital Partners and Hermes Investment Management have taken UK smart metering business Energy Assets Group out of the London Stock Exchange for £209 million ($275 million; €249 million).
The US firm now owns 74.4 percent of the Scotland-based business, with Hermes holding a 25.6 percent share. It remains unclear whether Alinda used its Fund III, which it launched last year with a target of $5 billion, to complete the deal. The firm had not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The bid represents a 5.5 percent improvement on the pledge Alinda first tabled in April, which valued Energy Assets at £198 million.
Energy Assets initially accepted the offer at 685 pence per share, which represented a 40 percent premium to the share price at the time. But then four rebel institutions, Investmentaktiengesellschaft für langfristige Investoren TGV, Oakcliff Capital Partners, Forest Manor and SF Metropolis Valuefund, decided to oppose the proposal.
Energy Assets is the largest independent provider of industrial and commercial gas metering services in the UK, according to the consortium. As at March 2016 Energy Assets owned and managed a portfolio of about 450,000 gas and electricity assets.
The new offer represents a multiple of about 12.7 times EBITDA for the period ended 31 March 2016, according to a June statement by the board of Energy Assets.
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