Brookfield Asset Management has agreed to buy London-listed repair services company HomeServe in a £4bn deal.
The Canadian alternative investment giant has agreed a cash deal with Homeserve’s board that represents a 71% premium to the group’s share price on 23 March.
Homeserve’s share price jumped 10% on the back of the announced agreement.
Founded in 1993, the take-private move for HomeServe marks an end to its 18-year tenure on the London Stock Exchange.
The tie-up is the latest in a long line of UK public company takeovers in recent years, with private equity and alternative investment groups hunting for bargains on the London Stock Exchange.
READ Private equity’s newest target: Your pension fund
At £45.8bn, the cumulative value of the 235 buyouts of UK-based companies last year represented the biggest headline figure in the 35-year history of the Centre for Private Equity and MBO Research (CMBOR), surpassed on an inflation-adjusted basis only by the £44.1bn recorded in 2007.
Brookfield Infrastructure managing partner Sikander Rashid said that the investment will involve continuing to grow HomeServe globally “as critical residential infrastructure is upgraded in the coming years to drive decarbonisation and improve energy efficiency.”
Sam Pollock, managing partner and chief executive of Brookfield Infrastructure, added: “At Brookfield, we are building the world’s leading residential infrastructure investment platform, and our acquisition of HomeServe allows us to partner with one of the highest quality companies in the sector.”
The HomeServe directors, who have been so advised by JPMorgan Cazenove, UBS and Goldman Sachs International, said that they considered the terms of the acquisition to be fair and reasonable and that they would recommend that shareholders vote in favour of the deal.
To contact the author of this story with feedback or news, email Sebastian McCarthy
This article was published by Private Equity News
To contact the author of this story with feedback or news, email Sebastian McCarthy
