Immigrate to Portugal Focus on Portugal's Economy: Power Assets Holdings, a company under Li Ka-shing, recently filed documents announcing an agreement for a joint venture, which it co-controls, to acquire the Portuguese wind power company Iberwind Group. Less than a month after news of the merger of Power Assets Holdings and the relocation of the registered offices of all companies under Li Ka-shing away from China, the business group he leads has taken another step in its continued expansion into Europe.
According to documents filed yesterday with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by the utility company Power Assets Holdings, the company and Cheung Kong Infrastructure have entered into an agreement to establish a joint venture with 50% ownership each. The new company will spend 288 million euros (approximately 324 million US dollars) to acquire Iberwind. The acquisition is currently awaiting regulatory approval.
The document states that Power Assets Holdings and Cheung Kong Infrastructure will each provide a maximum capital commitment of 144 million euros in the form of capital or loans as payment for the joint venture transaction to the Portuguese wind venture capital firm Magnum Capital Industrial Partners.
The document introduces that Iberwind primarily operates wind power businesses in Portugal, with a portfolio including 31 wind farms totaling approximately 684 megawatts, accounting for about 15% of the Portuguese wind power market by installed capacity.
Power Assets Holdings believes that this acquisition will develop a renewable energy platform globally for the aforementioned joint venture under Li Ka-shing, which is consistent with the group's strategy of investing in power infrastructure worldwide.
According to the latest statistics from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Li Ka-shing's personal net worth is 31.3 billion US dollars, ranking him 18th in the world in terms of personal wealth. Since the beginning of this year, the trend of him gradually shifting his business focus from mainland China to overseas, especially Europe, has become increasingly apparent.
At the beginning of this year, Li Ka-shing initiated a large-scale restructuring of his assets—restructuring and merging the businesses of CK Hutchison Holdings and Cheung Kong (Holdings), which sparked controversy over a disguised relocation of corporate registration overseas. Later that month, foreign media reported that CK Hutchison Holdings would acquire the UK mobile operator O2, a subsidiary of the Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica SA, for more than 10 billion pounds.
Following the "century-scale restructuring" of Cheung Kong (Holdings) and Hutchison Whampoa earlier this year, Li Ka-shing carried out another major business integration early last month, with his subsidiary Cheung Kong Infrastructure deciding to acquire Power Assets Holdings through a share swap valued at 11.6 billion US dollars. Upon completion of the merger, Power Assets Holdings will be delisted.
A Wall Street News article last month specifically mentioned that the CK Group currently has 10 listed companies, and the registered offices of companies such as CK Hutchison, CK Property, and CKI are all overseas. Power Assets Holdings is the only remaining CK Group company registered within China. This means that once Power Assets Holdings is successfully merged into Cheung Kong Infrastructure and delisted, Li Ka-shing will have finally completed the full relocation of the registered offices of all his companies.