Egypt’s EFG Hermes Sells U.K. Solar Assets For More Than $600 Million




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Egyptian investment bank EFG-Hermes Holding Co. sold a controlling stake in a U.K. solar-energy portfolio to a Malaysian utility in a deal that values the assets at 500 million pounds ($647 million).

EFG-Hermes’s private equity arm sold the stake in Vortex III, a photovoltaic portfolio with 365 megawatts of capacity, to TNB International, a subsidiary of Tenaga Nasional Bhd., the Egyptian company said in a statement Thursday. Vortex III generated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of 39 million pounds last year, the bank said.

EFG-Hermes, which bought the Vortex III assets in 2017, said it wants to establish another renewable-energy portfolio and may invest almost $600 million in the next few years to build it.

“We see a lot of opportunities still in Europe because of the vast amount of assets and development going on,” Karim Moussa, EFG-Hermes’s head of asset management and private equity, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “We see very interesting opportunities in Latin America. We’re looking at Mexico and Chile. We like Australia.”