Posts tagged 'utilities'

Capstone acquires Bristol Water for C$215m

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

Learn more

| Subscribe to Kate's posts
| Oct 06 2011 04:29 | Comment |

Capstone, the Canadian infrastructure fund, has made its first investment in the UK, buying a controlling stake in Bristol Water for C$215m ($206m), the FT reports. The deal, which values the English water company at C$457m including debt, would be the fund’s second European deal but the first one in the water sector, where there has been a flurry of mergers and acquisitions activity. Agbar, the Spanish water specialist majority-owned by Suez Environnement of France, will retain a 30 per cent stake and has signed a deal with Capstone to provide advice on trends and operational innovations in the industry. It acquired Bristol for £362m ($560m) including debt five years ago. Water has been an attractive sector for infrastructure funds because of its low risk and high growth. The returns in the UK market exceed those in Canada, one person involved in the deal said. Read more

Japanese utilities have a ‘Tepco moment’

| Mar 28 2011 11:06 | Comment |

A new phase in Tepco’s “BP moment”: just like the whirlpool created by the massive tsunami after the March 11 earthquake, Japan’s biggest electricity provider and operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant is dragging peers into its own troubled vortex.

Investors’ attitudes to Japan’s other utilities have not been nearly as severe as the scare that has driven Tepco’s share price down 73 per cent since March 11, and further widened its CDS spreads on Monday by 143bps to 473bps (amid fears, as Markit’s Gavan Nolan remarked, that the company “is losing control of the situation”). But it’s still a very worrying sign for anybody involved in Japan’s nuclear power industry. Read more

Euro nuclear, paralysed and paralysing [updated]

Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)

Learn more

| Subscribe to Joseph's posts
| Mar 15 2011 10:05 | Comment |

A nasty stasis in shares in E.ON, RWE and EDF at pixel time:

 Read more

Duke set for $13bn Progress deal

| Jan 10 2011 02:29 | Comment |

Duke Energy is in advanced talks to buy Progress Energy, in a stock-based deal worth more than $13bn that would create the largest US power utility and hasten consolidation in the utilities sector, reports the FT. The agreed deal could be announced on Monday, although it still requires approval from state regulators, who have blocked several utility mergers. The merged company would be worth about $36bn; Duke’s market cap was $23.6bn at the end of last week. Bloomberg cites people close to the deal saying that Duke, under chairman and CEO James Rogers, plans to make Progress CEO William Johnson chief of the combined company. Read more

Triple-A utility, Aa3 country

Tracy Alloway used to be deputy editor of FT Alphaville. Here she learned the details of derivatives, the absurdities of accounting and the various structures of ... erm ... structured finance. She now covers big US banks for the FT paper, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. She pops up on FT Alphaville every once in a while.

Learn more

| Subscribe to Tracy's posts
| Nov 23 2010 15:13 | Comment |

Deutsche Bahn über alles, anyone?

Moody’s has added to the corporate-better-than-sovereign meme, noting in that the ratings of some European infrastructure and utilities companies could outstrip those of their parent sovereign. Sometimes by more than two rating levels, in fact. Read more

Market wets itself over UK QE

Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)

Learn more

| Subscribe to Joseph's posts
| Oct 25 2010 12:28 | Comment |

Here’s one for the ‘weird QE effects on equities‘ files. One for those already identifying higher inflation expectations even before QE is announced, too.

Presenting the incredibly inflating share prices of UK water companies, as noted by Evolution Securities on Monday (chart via the FT/Reuters): Read more

Tepco and ‘unusual price movements’ in Japan

| Sep 30 2010 12:41 | Comment |

Question: why would a stable, big Japanese company with huge cashflow, a high credit rating, a dividend yield on its shares of 2.9 per cent and ready access to debt markets — where its bonds trade at yields of under 0.5 per cent — want to launch a straight equity issue of Y555bn, or $6.65bn?

Indeed, many investors and analysts asked the same question after Tokyo Electric Power, or Tepco, Japan’s biggest utility company, announced plans for the monster share issue — the first such issue in nearly 30 years. The lead underwriter for the issue is Nomura, Japan’s biggest broker. Read more

How utilities are just like banks

Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.

Learn more

| Subscribe to Izzy's posts
| Dec 04 2009 11:00 | Comment |

As we’ve reported before, UK natural gas prices are destined to stay low for the foreseeable future as a slew of  liquefied natural gas cargoes, unwanted elsewhere, is redirected to British shores.

Most cargoes will have originally been intended for the US market, but a boom in alternative natural gas production in the country has now muted demand for imports — releasing a record number of cargoes  into the spot market. Read more