Investment Firms to Buy Shipping Company Esvagt from Maersk

Photo: Esvagt

 

COPENHAGEN, July 7 (Reuters) – Investment firms 3i Infrastructure and AMP Capital have agreed to buy Danish shipping company Esvagt for 4.1 billion Danish crowns ($607 million), aiming to tap growing demand for servicing offshore wind farms.

Esvagt is being sold by Danish shipping and oil group A.P. Moller-Maersk, which controls 75 percent of the shares, and a group of individual investors who own the rest.

It has a fleet of 43 vessels and is a provider of offshore safety and support primarily in and around the North Sea and the Barents Sea.

The buyout will be backed with 3 billion crowns of leveraged loans in a financing deal led by Royal Bank of Canada and Royal Bank of Scotland, banking sources said.

The financing comprises around 2 billion crowns of term loans and 1 billion crowns of undrawn facilities, both denominated in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish crowns as well as sterling, the sources said.

The loans will be sold to investors in a syndication process in the coming weeks, the sources added.

Esvagt made a record profit of 252 million crowns in 2014 on turnover of 943 million crowns.

Since 2010, the company has been servicing the Bligh Bank Offshore Wind Farm for Danish wind turbine maker Vestas .

This year, it has put two specially built service vessels for offshore wind turbine farms into operation for Siemens Wind Power.

A.P. Moller-Maersk has offloaded a string of companies and stakes in subsidiaries in recent years to focus on container shipping, oil, port operations and drilling. It has booked more than $11 billion from divestments since 2009.

($1 = 6.7689 Danish crowns) (Reporting by Ole Mikkelsen; Additional reporting by Claire Ruckin in London; Editing by Mark Potter and Pravin Char)

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