HGV acquires Hamburg district heating network from Vattenfall

Hamburg — Allen & Overy LLP has advi­sed Hambur­ger Gesell­schaft für Vermö­­gens- und Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment (HGV), the invest­ment holding company of the Free and Hansea­tic City of Hamburg (FHH), on the acqui­si­tion of the remai­ning shares in Wärme Hamburg GmbH from Vatten­fall. Based on the agreed mini­mum purchase price of 950 million euros, HGV paid a purchase price of 625 million euros for the remai­ning 74.9 percent of the shares.

The company opera­tes the Hamburg district heating network as well as local gene­ra­tion faci­li­ties, e.g. the Wedel and Tief­stack combi­ned heat and power plants. At the same time, the Wedel combi­ned heat and power plant had to be spun off from another company in a paral­lel project and trans­fer­red to the target company. Until now, the FHH owned 25.1 percent of the district heating company. Although the acqui­si­tion was made by exer­cis­ing a purchase option nego­tia­ted in imple­men­ta­tion of the “Our Hamburg — Our Network” refe­ren­dum, the tran­sac­tion ulti­m­ately took more than a year to complete.

The Allen & Overy team had alre­ady advi­sed HGV in 2011 on the acqui­si­tion of stra­te­gic stakes in the compa­nies that operate the supply networks in Hamburg for elec­tri­city, gas and district heating. In addi­tion, Allen & Overy assis­ted HGV in the step-by-step imple­men­ta­tion of the full buyback of Hamburg’s energy networks follo­wing the adop­tion of the refe­ren­dum. The current tran­sac­tion thus marks the conclu­sion of a series of acqui­si­ti­ons in which FHH has alre­ady taken over Strom­netz Hamburg GmbH and the corre­spon­ding service areas, inclu­ding meter­ing and support for trans­port faci­li­ties, from Vatten­fall and Gasnetz Hamburg GmbH from E.ON.

By buying back the energy infra­struc­ture, the Hamburg Senate is laying the foun­da­tion for a successful energy turn­around in Hamburg. The Hansea­tic City aims to signi­fi­cantly reduce green­house gas emis­si­ons. The tran­sac­tion is regarded as the final mile­stone in the complete remu­ni­ci­pa­liza­tion of Hamburg’s energy supply.

The Allen & Overy team included Part­ner Dr. Helge Schä­fer and Coun­sel Dr. Rüdi­ger Klüber (joint lead), Asso­cia­tes Dr. Moritz Merke­nich and Dr. Moritz Meis­ter (all Corporate/M&A, Hamburg), Part­ner Dr. Heike Weber and Senior Asso­ciate Tim Spran­ger (both Tax, Frank­furt), Part­ner Dr. Ellen Braun (Anti­trust, Hamburg) as well as Part­ner Jan-Erik Wind­thorst (Frank­furt), Coun­sel Dr. Alice Broich­mann (Munich) and Senior Asso­ciate Dr. Nico­las Gillen (all Dispute Reso­lu­tion, Frankfurt).

About Allen & Overy
Allen & Overy is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with appro­xi­m­ately 5,500 employees, inclu­ding appro­xi­m­ately 550 part­ners, in 44 offices worldwide.

Allen & Overy is repre­sen­ted in Germany at its offices in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt am Main, Hamburg and Munich with appro­xi­m­ately 220 lawy­ers, inclu­ding 47 part­ners. The lawy­ers advise leading natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies prima­rily in the areas of banking, finance and capi­tal markets law, corpo­rate law and M&A, tax law as well as other areas of busi­ness law.