Alinta is an Australian energy infrastructure
company.
It has grown from a small, Western
Australia
based gas
distributor and retailer to the largest energy infrastructure
company in Australia. It is owned by a consortium including
Singapore Power and various
Babcock & Brown funds.
History
The word Alinta is derived from the word for fire in a traditional
language of an
Aboriginal
tribe from Victoria.
It was formed as
AlintaGas in January 1995 when
the
vertical monopolist energy
supplier, the
State Energy
Commission of Western Australia, was disaggregated into
separate gas and electricity corporations. On 13 July 2000
legislation was passed by the
Government of Western
Australia for the sale of
AlintaGas which
subsequently listed on the
Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) on
17 October 2000.
On 8 May 2003 AlintaGas Ltd officially changed its name to Alinta
Limited.
On 23 July
2003 through a series of complicated transactions involving Alinta,
Aquila Inc, United Energy, and AMP Henderson Global, Alinta became the
operator, manager and part owner of regulated energy assets in
Western Australia and Victoria
.
In April 2004 Alinta acquired
Duke
Energy International's assets in Australia and New Zealand. In
October 2004 a
DUET/Alinta/
Alcoa Consortium acquired the
Dampier to Bunbury
Natural Gas Pipeline from
Epic
Energy.
On 4 October 2005 Alinta publicly floated the pipelines and power
stations it acquired from
Duke Energy
International into a separate investment vehicle, Alinta
Infrastructure Holdings (AIH) which also traded on the ASX. In
October 2006 Alinta, through Alinta IH Pty Ltd (
Alinta IHPL), made an offer to buy out the 80%
of the shareholding in AIH that it did not already own. By 11
January 2007 Alinta had acquired 91.4%, and moved to compulsorily
acquire the remainder.
Alinta acquired infrastructure assets and the
Agility
business from
AGL
through a combination of merger and demerger transactions on 25
October 2006.
On 9 January 2007 Alinta announced that senior executives and the
Chairman were working on a
Management
buyout proposal, with
Macquarie
Bank as their advisor. As a result, the
chief executive officer Bob Browning resigned on 11 January 2007, and
the company was clearly for sale to the highest bidder.
The company was eventually acquired by a consortium between
Australia's second-largest investment bank,
Babcock & Brown, and
Singapore Power, the largest utility company
in the
city-state. after putting up a bid
of A$13.9 billion, beating out a rival bid by Macquarie Bank.
The Alinta Limited take over by a consortium comprising Singapore
Power International (SPI), Babcock & Brown Infrastructure (BBI)
and Babcock & Brown Power (BBP) was completed in late August
2007. Subsequently, Alinta Limited was delisted from the Australian
Securities Exchange in September 2007. The company was split into
the following businesses:
- Alinta, retaining the West Australian gas
retail business
- WestNet Energy,
which provides asset management, operational, construction and
maintenance services to the owners of the AlintaGas Networks gas
distribution system in Western Australia; and to the owners of the
Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline. It is also a major
contractor in overhead and underground electricity cabling.
- Alinta LGA, renamed to Jemena on 4 August 2008, which manages energy
infrastructure assets in the eastern states of Australia including
Queensland and New South Wales gas pipelines and gas and
electricity distribution networks
See also
References
- Alinta.net.au
External links
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