A cross-border team led by Frankfurt Financial Services partner Jens Rinze has advised French asset manager Eiffel Investment Group and Austrian bank Kommunalkredit Austria AG (Kommunalkredit) as legal counsel on the acquisition financing granted to GE Ventures AG for the successful acquisition of a 26% share in Global Tech I Offshore Wind GmbH. Global Tech I is Germany’s fourth largest offshore wind farm in the North Sea with a total capacity of 400 MW.
The team also included Spain and Germany dual-qualified Financial Services of counsel Ana Bohórquez, Frankfurt Corporate partner Sabine Pittrof, and Madrid Financial Services partner Manuel Mingot.
The acquisition financing was structured in a series of transactions from seven different sellers through two acquisition vehicles. Global Tech I is one of the first ‘far offshore wind farms’ in the German North Sea. The wind farm, which began operating in 2015, was built at a cost of approximately €1.2 billion. The power plant has a total of 80 wind turbines with a capacity of five MW. With an annual environmentally friendly energy production of 1.4 billion kilowatt hours, the plant covers the average electricity consumption of about 450,000 households.
Lucid Partners AG, a Swiss-based advisory boutique, is a minority co-investor in the transaction with Global Ventures AG and acted as buy-side financial advisor, arranging the acquisition financing and mandated to manage the participation going forward on behalf of GE Ventures AG I. Acquisition financing for the transaction was provided by Kommunalkredit, a specialist in infrastructure and energy financing, and funds managed by Eiffel Investment Group’s infrastructure team in Paris, a key European investor in the energy transition.