The chairman and founder of Northland Power is selling $750-million worth of his stake in the company through a secondary offering.
James Temerty is selling 32,120,000 of his shares of the Toronto-based green-energy company he founded in 1987 for $23.35 a piece. A press release issued by Northland Power on Monday said the sale is for estate planning purposes and that Mr. Temerty will remain a long-term company shareholder.
“Northland’s management team has done a tremendous job in implementing our growth strategy and I remain very optimistic about the company’s future prospects," Mr. Temerty said in a statement.
A syndicate of banks, led by CIBC World Markets Inc., has agreed to purchase the shares in a bought deal. The underwriters have also been given the option to purchase an additional 4,818,000 shares from Mr. Temerty, for approximately $113-million, within 30 days of the offering’s closing date.
After the sale, Mr. Temerty will control roughly 14.7 per cent of the company’s outstanding voting shares if the underwriters don’t purchase additional shares. If they buy up the maximum number of shares available to them, Mr. Temerty will control approximately 12 per cent of the outstanding voting shares.
Northland owns or has a stake in 2,429 megawatts of operating generating capacity and in 269 megawatts that are still under construction, representing the Deutsche Bucht offshore wind project in the North Sea and a 60 per cent equity stake in the Hai Long projects under development in Taiwan.
Alexandra Posadzki