Investment Firms to Buy Shipping Company Esvagt from Maersk

COPENHAGEN, July 7 (Reuters) – Investment companies 3i Infrastructure and AMP Capital have agreed to purchase Danish delivery firm Esvagt for 4.1 billion Danish crowns ($607 million), aiming to faucet rising demand for servicing offshore wind farms.

Esvagt is being bought by Danish delivery and oil group A.P. Moller-Maersk, which controls 75 p.c of the shares, and a bunch of particular person traders who personal the remainder.

It has a fleet of 43 vessels and is a supplier of offshore security and assist primarily in and across the North Sea and the Barents Sea.

The buyout can 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 mentioned.

The financing contains round 2 billion crowns of time period loans and 1 billion crowns of undrawn services, each denominated in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish crowns in addition to sterling, the sources mentioned.

The loans can be bought to traders in a syndication course of within the coming weeks, the sources added.

Esvagt made a file revenue of 252 million crowns in 2014 on turnover of 943 million crowns.

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

This 12 months, it has put two specifically constructed service vessels for offshore wind turbine farms into operation for Siemens Wind Power.

A.P. Moller-Maersk has offloaded a string of firms and stakes in subsidiaries lately to concentrate on container delivery, oil, port operations and drilling. It has booked greater 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)