Sale of 396 MW offshore wind project off the German coast 

Partners Group, the global private markets investment manager, has, on behalf of its clients, agreed to sell its stake in Merkur Offshore, a 396 MW offshore wind farm located in the North Sea off the coast of Germany.

Partners Group is the largest shareholder in a consortium of Merkur shareholders, which includes InfraRed Capital Partners, DEME Concessions, GE Energy Financial Services, and ADEME.

The Consortium has agreed to sell 100% of Merkur to APG, the Dutch pension investor, and The Renewables Infrastructure Group (TRIG), the London-listed investment company advised by InfraRed Capital Partners. TRIG will acquire around 36% stake while APG will own about 64% stake in the project. 

Partners Group, together with the Consortium, acquired Merkur in August 2016, in line with the firm's relative value strategy of proactively building core assets. Over the last three years, the wind project has been transformed from a construction-ready development site to a utility-scale wind farm within the German exclusive economic zone off the North Sea coast. Now fully operational, Merkur comprises 66 General Electric  Haliade-150 6MW offshore wind turbines, which are capable of supplying green energy to approximately 500,000 households. The project benefits from a guaranteed Feed-in-Tariff until 2033 and has a ten-year O&M agreement with GE Renewable Energy for the service and maintenance of the turbines.

The deal is expected to close by the first half of 2020, subject to pending approval from regulatory authorities. Once the deal is finalized, TRIG plans to sell-down part of the newly acquired asset to other minority co-investors managed by InfraRed while keeping around 25% in the wind farm.

BofA Securities acted as exclusive financial advisor to the Consortium in the sale of Merkur.