Fundraising

Alinda wins over rebel shareholders with improved offer

The US fund manager has bettered its initial bid for Scottish metering business Energy Assets by 5.5%, valuing the company at £209m.

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Alinda Capital Partners has upped its offer for Glasgow-based utility metering firm Energy Assets Group, valuing the business at £209 million ($301 million; €267 million).

The fresh bid represents a 5.5 percent improvement on its initial pledge, which valued Energy Assets at £198 million. 

The latter had accepted an offer from Alinda back in April that was worth 685 pence per share – a 40 percent premium to the share price at the time. But then four rebel institutions, namely Investmentaktiengesellschaft für langfristige Investoren TGV, Oakcliff Capital Partners, Forest Manor and SF Metropolis Valuefund, decided to vote against the proposal.

Alinda's move aims at convincing the holdouts, which account for 22.6 percent of Energy Assets, to back the acquisition. The first three have now pledged to accept the new offer.

Further commitments from British Steel Pension Fund, Sand Grove Capital Management, Maven Investment Partners and IPConcept, mean that BidCo – a shell company created by Alinda to complete the deal – has the backing of 79.5 percent of shareholders.

The proposal came just one day after Energy Assets posted a 20 percent jump in pre-tax profit to £10.7 million. Revenue rose by 25 percent to £45.3 million.

The new offer represents a multiple of about 12.7 times EBITDA for the period ended 31 March 2016, the board of energy assets said in a statement.