Augusta & Co plc (“Augusta”) acted as exclusive financial adviser to Bard Holding GmbH (“Bard”) the remnant business of the German vertically integrated turbine maker Bard.
Bard is currently in a restructuring led by its main creditor UniCredit Bank AG. Augusta was brought in by Bard to seek a buyer for a packet of unpermitted German North Sea wind farms totalling 240 turbine locations or potentially 1440MW on a 6MW turbine basis.
Against the backdrop of the well publicised restructuring of the Bard Group, challenging news coming out of the German offshore industry with widespread project and grid delays and an uncertain outcome of the regulatory environment following an upcoming general election in Germany, Augusta managed to generate significant buyer interest in these three large German offshore wind farms.
Mortimer Menzel who led the deal at Augusta commented:
“The environment for this deal was anything but favourable but we managed to generate significant interest and finally select the perfect investor in PNE who are going to continue the excellent and professional work the team at Bard had commenced and see these projects through to being fully ready to build. The price structure is innovative with an initial up-front payment followed by a bias to later earn-out payments based on project milestones or later sale of the projects perfectly matching the buyer’s business model”.
We believe this is the largest deal in the German offshore wind market to date based on unpermitted projects.
The transaction closed in September 2013.