Who is Equitix, Acea’s partner on solar energy
The British fund Equitix will have the majority stake in the new company that will manage Acea's photovoltaic plants. All the details
Acea, a multi-service company based in Rome, announced last week that it had reached an agreement with the British private equity firm Equitix.
WHAT THE AGREEMENT PROVIDES FOR
Equitix will obtain a majority stake, of 60 per cent, in the newly established company (HoldCo) to which the Acea Sun Capital photovoltaic plants in Italy already in operation or in the grid connection phase will be transferred.
Acea Sun Capital is a limited liability company of the Acea group which focuses on solar energy.
The portfolio of photovoltaic assets in the hands of the Equitix newco has a total installed capacity of 105 megawatts: 59 MW are newly built plants already connected to the grid, or in the process of being connected; 46 MW, on the other hand, incentivized on the basis of different Energy Accounts.
WHAT ACEA WILL DO
The management and maintenance of the plants that will pass to HoldCo will remain with Acea, through the signing of multi-year contracts with the newco . The group has specified that it has undertaken to withdraw the energy produced by the new construction plants on the basis of long-term energy purchase contracts.
HoldCo will also be able to evaluate access to a series of photovoltaic plants (approximately 500 MW in total) under development by Acea.
THE ECONOMIC VALUE
The transaction between Acea and Equitix has a value of 220 million euro (referring to the entire portfolio of plants). It is part of Acea's 2020-2024 industrial plan, which aims to increase the group's presence in the renewable sources sector and in particular solar energy, reaching 750 MW of photovoltaic capacity: an objective that the group also wants to achieve through partnerships with financial entities, such as Equitix.
TAGES DISCARDED
Also competing with Equitix for the partnership with Acea was Tages, an Italian investment company. But as early as last November, a source told Reuters that the exclusive had gone to Equitix.
WHAT EQUITIX DOES
Equitix is a British private equity firm founded in 2007 that invests, develops and manages infrastructure in Europe. The managing director and co-founder is Geoff Jakcson. The director of the Asset Management division is an Italian, Emanuela Cernoia : she graduated from Bocconi and obtained a master's degree from Harvard; from 2003 to 2019 he worked for Transport for London (the company that deals with public transport in the London area), obtaining the role of Director of Corporate Finance.
The majority stake in Equitix is held by TFG Asset Management, which in turn is part of Tetragon, a British financial group listed on the London Stock Exchange and Euronext (the financial market of the euro zone).
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/acea-equitix/ on Tue, 28 Dec 2021 10:54:40 +0000.