Deals

Glennmont seals asset-backed loans for renewables debt fund

The two loans to Italian wind and solar facilities form part of the Glennmont REBS fund, which the UK firm says it established following investor requests for a differentiated product.

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Glennmont Partners has agreed the first asset-backed securities lending deals in the Italian renewables market as part of its new European renewables debt fund.

Alongside Natixis and Banca Popolare di Bari, the London-based manager underwrote a €51.5 million issuance. This comprised €41.8 million of Class A floating rate senior notes and €9.6 million of Class B floating rate junior notes. The proceeds will be used to acquire a portfolio of project-finance loans from an Italian bank covering 14 wind and solar assets with a total capacity of 66.5MW.

Glennmont also provided debt financing to London-based WRM Group for the acquisition of loans backed by solar assets with a total capacity of more than 85MW across 74 plants. WRM Group said the loans have a gross value of around €180 million. The deal was underwritten by UBS Asset Management’s Archmore Infrastructure Debt Platform II.

The deals, which were announced separately over the past week, are the first asset-backed securities transactions in the Italian renewables market and the first from Glennmont’s new REBS Europe Fund I. The vehicle represents the manager’s first foray into the debt market following the raising of three renewable energy equity funds, the latest of which closed on €850 million last month.

Lawrence declined to disclose the targeted size of the fund but said it would be investing across the renewables spectrum in Europe through a variety of debt forms. He added that asset-backed securities are not too different from traditional lending forms: “It’s still about lending to renewable energy power plants and fundamentally it’s about whether it’s a good asset or not. They all have a couple of years of operational history behind them. They would have started off with 12- or 15-year loans to them.”

He added that the fund would be looking to partner with banks in transactions and that it would be raising substantial amounts from its existing investor base across Europe, Asia and North America.

Glennmont announced a further diversification at the start of the month by securing its first offshore wind deal. The firm acquired a 25 percent stake in the 330MW Gode Wind 1 project in Germany from Global Infrastructure Partners.