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| Allianz Capital Partners & Borealis Infrastructure Management’s €1.4 billion acquisition of Net4Gas | |
| Target adviser | JPMorgan |
| Acquirers’ advisers | Barclays, KPMG |
| return to the Deals of the Year 2013 index | |
In a lacklustre year for dealmaking in emerging Europe, the acquisition of Czech gas transmission firm Net4Gas by German insurer Allianz and the infrastructure arm of Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System stood out by virtue of its complexity and the competitiveness of the bidding process.
The deal was also noteworthy in combining two key current trends in M&A: the pullback from central and eastern Europe by western strategic investors – in this case Germany’s RWE – and the increasing appetite of international institutional buyers for direct investment in infrastructure assets.
Net4Gas owns and operates a network of more than 3,600 kilometres of pipelines that supplies gas to both the Czech domestic market and countries across Europe. Competition for the firm was fierce, with five contenders – including local Czech groups EPH and KKCG, as well as two other consortiums featuring international infrastructure investors – reaching the final bidding round.
