3i fund considers Novera bid

Novera, the UK alternative energy company, has said on Friday February 15 that it had received a bid approach but stipulated that for it recommend any offer it would have to be at a 44% premium to Friday’s share price. A bid at that level would value the company at £112m (US$218m).

Early on Monday February 18 the shares were trading around 87 pence each, roughly 9.5% up on the Friday close.

Novera is one of the largest independent UK renewable energy groups and owns landfill gas and waste sites as well as wind farms. It has a capacity to generate 122MW and plans to take that up to 250MW by 2011.

Nearly all the output is sold on long-term contracts to energy groups such as Powergen, owned by Germany’s E.ON and British Gas, owned by UK energy group, Centrica.

The UK government has regulations in place making energy distributors buy a growing proportion of their energy from renewable resources.

3i Infrastructure, set-up by the UK venture capital to private equity group 3i, has earlier expressed interest in investing in renewable energy.