Iberdrola receives the green light from Australia for its offer on the wind energy company Infigen

The Australian regulator, the ‘Foreign Investment Review Board’ (FIRB), has given the green light to Iberdrola’s offer for Infigen Energy. The Spanish firm goes one step further to seize the renewable energy company for which it has embarked on a ‘takeover war’ with the Philippine group Ayala. As reported on Tuesday by the Spanish, the second signature of the Ibex 35 by market capitalization, “with the approval of FIRB, Infigen’s shareholders have clear and convincing reasons to accept Iberdrola’s friendly offer.”

A few days ago, the board of directors of Infigen Energy recommended “unanimously” to its shareholders that they accept the new offer presented by Iberdrola, which improved the price to obtain the Australian group of renewables to 0.89 Australian dollars (0.545 euros). ), from the initial 0.86 and by resigning, in addition, by renouncing all the conditions that it had initially imposed to carry it out, except for the acquisition of a stake of more than 50% of the Australian capital stock (calculated fully diluted) and the approval of the offer by the Australian regulator, which now gives the go-ahead.

The improvement of the offer by the group led by Ignacio Sánchez Galán occurred in response to the counter-offer made by the Philippine Ayala in the ‘battle for takeover bids’ that both started by the Sydney-based renewable company. The Philippine group matched Iberdrola’s starting price.

In its reports on the valuation of the offers by the company, the Infigen board highlights “the value and certainty” offered by Iberdrola’s cash offer. Likewise, Infigen considers that the only conditions that the Spanish energy company finally imposes are acceptable during the period of the offer.

For this reason, the members of the Australian’s board intend to accept Iberdrola’s offer with the titles they own, “in the absence of a superior proposal.” Infigen’s board also recommends “unanimously” to its shareholders that they reject the offer of UAC Energy, a company owned by Ayala, as well as ignore any document that has been sent to them and take no action regarding their offer.
Expand the renewable business and expand in Australia

The offer on Infigen allows Iberdrola to deepen two of its objectives: on the one hand, it continues to expand its renewables business – it is already one of the largest wind energy operators in the world – and on the other it takes a step forward to strengthen its business in Australia. Last January, the electricity company already announced an investment of 300 million euros in a hybrid project of wind and solar energy in the south of the country in collaboration with the Irish DP Energy.

Iberdrola is among the companies -energy sector- that are managing to weather the downpour on the stock market due to the coronavirus crisis. In fact, his shares soared 20.1% so far this year in the Spanish selective to 10.82 euros, which he fired on Monday. This raises its market value to 69,828 million euros, which places it only behind the textile multinational Inditex (76,046 million euros).