Canadian asset manager Brookfield has signed a share purchase agreement with French independent power producer (IPP) Neoen.
The closing of the deal will see Brookfield take a 53.12% majority stake in Neoen at €39.85 (US$42.6) per share from investors Impala and Fonds Stratégique de Participations, an investment vehicle owned by seven French insurance companies, amongst others.
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The deal values the IPP at €6.1 billion.
Brookfield has also opened a tender agreement with French public sector investment bank Bpifrance to offer up its 4.36% stake in Neoen’s outstanding share capital.
Neoen announced negotiations with Brookfield in late May for a majority sale to the asset owner, along with its institutional partners Brookfield Renewables and Singapore-headquartered investor Temasek.
At the time, Neoen’s CEO Xavier Barbaro said the company was “thrilled to open a new chapter in Neoen’s history, with the arrival of Brookfield as our majority shareholder.”
Once the acquisition has closed, Neoen said that it expects Brookfield to initiate an all-cash mandatory tender offer for all of the remaining shares and outstanding convertible bonds in the company.
Neoen has been expanding its global footprint of late. In February it secured US$1.1 billion towards a 1.5GW renewable energy capacity expansion project in Australia. A total of 777MW of this capacity is slated to be solar PV, spread across five projects, in addition to four wind generation sites and a large-scale battery energy storage system project. The IPP plans to have 10GW of renewable energy capacity operational or under construction by 2030.
Equally, Brookfield reported a “record year” in its Q4 2023 financial results for its renewables management subsidiary, Brookfield Renewable Partners. This was largely driven by increased production from – and acquisition of – solar PV projects, which saw the company post US$225 million in funds from operations (FFO) during the quarter.
In October 2023, Brookfield completed the acquisition of US utility Duke Energy’s commercial utility-scale solar PV business for around US$2.8 billion.
