新闻
Freshfields advises on bond financing of CPPIB’s participation in German offshore windfarms Hohe See and Albatros
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP (‘Freshfields’) has advised a group of institutional lenders, led by the Talanx Group (‘Talanx’), in the €511m project bond financing of the investment by Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in two German offshore windfarms. The bond was issued by CPPIB Renewables Europe S.à r.l. (‘CPPIB’). The ‘Hohe See’ and ‘Albatros’ offshore windfarms, which are both in operation, bring a combined total of 609MW of capacity to the Germany electricity grid.
CPPIB acquired its minority stake of approximately 24.5 per cent in the two windfarms in 2018; together with leading Canadian energy company Enbridge Inc., the companies hold a combined interest of 49.9 per cent in the project. The remaining 50.1 per cent is held by EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG, which also developed the offshore windfarms.
The senior secured notes were assigned a BBB+ credit rating from Scope Ratings and were structured to qualify as green bonds under CPPIB’s Green Bond Framework. The financing closed on 11 February 2020.
The bond was issued to certain Talanx entities and select German and international insurance companies, including Signal Iduna, Versicherungskammer Bayern and a series of affiliated companies. Following Talanx’s debt investments in the offshore wind projects Gode Wind 1 and Borkum Riffgrund 2, this is the third large-scale offshore wind financing on which Talanx has participated in the debt investment with Freshfields as their legal advisor.
The Freshfields team was led by partners Dr. Daniel Reichert-Facilides and Dr. Robin Helmke, and included partners Markus Benzing and Mandeep Lotay.