Good morning Eurohubsters, Craig McGlashan here with the Dealflow.
I hope you had a good weekend. We’ve got plenty to report this morning, so let’s dive right in.
Scarcity value. Actis sees renewable energy projects as “remarkably” resilient and essential building blocks, especially in the current volatile environment, Lucy Heintz, partner and head of infrastructure, told PE Hub Europe’s Nina Lindholm.
Rezolv, a central and southeastern Europe renewables platform launched by Actis in late July, announced in November plans to build Europe’s largest solar photovoltaic plant in Arad County, Romania. Rezolv expects the plant to be online by 2025 and to provide clean energy to over 370,000 households.
The push for renewables in Europe comes at a vital time, especially given the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on energy prices.
“There’s a lot going on in Europe,” said Heintz. “Not only do you have Europe’s need to achieve energy transition, particularly pressing in CEE, which has high levels of installed fossil fuels. Of course, added to that, you have the pressure of the Ukraine situation.”
Rezolv will provide subsidy-free clean energy at a long-term, stable price for commercial and industrial users, including supermarkets, breweries, telecoms and other large businesses, according to the firm.
With its investments, Actis looks for “enormous” market opportunity, a foundation set of assets, a route to market in terms of power purchase agreements, an additional pipeline and a high-quality management team, said Heintz. “We see all that in central eastern Europe, with this added dimension of energy security; the need for corporates to procure, not just for the reliability and security, but also for their own transition, which we’ve seen really accelerate since COP 26.”
Check out Nina’s full interview with Heintz for more on Actis’ plans for Rezolv and the wider CEE investment landscape.
Handover. French insurer APRIL Group is changing private equity hands, with CVC Capital Partners making way for KKR.
APRIL and KKR signed a long-term strategic partnership, with KKR set to become majority shareholder. The companies aim to boost APRIL’s development and digitalisation in the markets for borrowers, health and personal protection, niche property and casualty, international health insurance and wealth management in France and internationally.
The company had a turnover of €544 million in 2021 and has “double-digit growth dynamics” for 2022, according to a statement.
CVC bought the firm in 2019 and it has since focused on insurance distribution, and opened offices in Germany and Dubai.
Building out. Adelis Equity Partners announced it has divested its majority stake in Mobilhouse to a consortium led by investment firm Kirk Kapital.
Fredericia, Denmark-based Mobilhouse is a provider of temporary modular buildings for offices, schools, kindergartens, offices and building sites to private and public customers.
Under Adelis’ ownership, Mobilhouse executed a successful roll-out of its modular space offering driven by, amongst other things, ESG initiatives targeted towards public customers, according to a statement. In addition, the company has successfully shifted towards a 100 percent rental model, according to Adelis.
Check out the full coverage of the deal here.
Bowled over. Switching to sport, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has had some private equity interest in its tournament The Hundred, according to a report on Sky News.
Sky cited a source close to the ECB who said that London-headquartered Bridgepoint Group had made a £400 million ($484 million; €464 million) approach in the last few weeks to take majority ownership of the competition, which uses a new 100-ball format.
The source was sceptical that the approach would succeed, however.
Channelling. Queen’s Park Equity (QPE) invested in public cloud UCaaS platform Yay. The company will be able to provide its product to the channel partners of TelcoSwitch, whose management buyout QPE supported in June.
Yay is an “exceptional platform that is highly complementary to our existing partnership with TelcoSwitch”, said Nick Manning of QPE’s investment team.
London-based QPE invests up to £60 million to aid growth in companies in education, health and pharma, and tech in the UK and Europe.
That’s it from me – I’ll be back with you tomorrow.
Cheers,
Craig
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