LAWR

March 2014 Local Authority Waste & Recycling 23 MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS Product EfW plant with a capacity of 600,000 tonnes per annum. Also in December, Waterland Private Equity, the Dutch independent investment group, acquired the EfW operator Attero for €170m. This is Waterland's first investment in the waste industry and is notable because it succeeded ahead of strategic players such as SITA and Indaver, which were known to be interested in an acquisition, as well as other private equity houses such as Cerberus and Gilde. The capital available through private equity funds globally is at a record high and with increasing confidence around the industry, we expect more of these funds to be deployed into waste companies and projects. The debt on the Impetus deal was provided by Alcentra, which is a global asset management firm focused on sub-investment grade corporate credit. The funding takes the form of a unitranche investment (see definition box) and is the latest of more than 85 middle market transactions (£1.5bn in funds) which included senior debt, unitranche, second lien, mezzanine and equity co-investments. Other direct lending funds such as BlueBay are known to be active in the sector. In December, we also heard that a new £48 million EfW plant, based on advanced thermal gasification technology, will be built in the Midlands. Consortium Birmingham Bio Power received back- ing from the Green Investment Bank amongst other funders and will pro- cess 67,000 tpa of recovered wood to produce 10.3MW of electrical power. The consortium of investors included GIB, Foresight Group, Balfour Beatty, Eternity Capital Management, GCP Infrastructure Fund as well as devel- oper Carbonarius. Whilst the Bio Power plant will process a relatively homogeneous feedstock, the industry will see the commissioning of two gasification plants processing municipal black bag waste – a heterogeneous feedstock and therefore more challenging. Based on Energos and Air Products technology, these plants will open in Glasgow and Teeside respectively sometime in 2014. Finally, if there is one sign that the industry is returning to normal, and that M&A is featuring more prominently on corporate agendas, it is surely the fact that Biffa is back in the market. They have recently acquired both Shanks' solid waste business and PHS' commercial and industrial (C&I) contracts and whilst cash is still relatively constrained, we expect continued activity into 2014. Mark Wilson is partner and head of waste and renewables at Catalyst Corporate Finance. Source: Catalyst Corporate Finance - Global Waste Deal Database A unitranche is a type of credit facility or loan that is becoming increasingly popular in circumstances where borrowers would otherwise have had to separately negotiate first lien and second lien loans (guaranteed by assets and demanding different interest rate repayments) or senior and mezzanine credit facilities. [Source: http://lexicon.ft.com/] Unitranche

• Cover