Renantis is acquiring Ventient Energy to create one of Europe's five largest onshore wind producers. Most deals of this size come with a headline number. This one has none, and the reason is not secrecy. Both companies answer, in the end, to the same investor.
Key takeaways
- Renantis, formerly Falck Renewables, announced on 27 June 2023 that it will acquire Ventient Energy, combining the two into one of the largest renewable independent power producers in Europe. The deal value has not been disclosed.
- Both Renantis and Ventient Energy are owned by institutional investors advised by the Global Infrastructure group at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, and Enerdatics understands Renantis will be the dominant entity in the merger.
- The combined company will have 4.2 GW of installed capacity across more than 200 plants, making it one of the top five onshore wind IPPs in Europe, plus an 18 GW development pipeline spanning onshore wind, floating offshore wind, solar PV, storage and green hydrogen.
- Ventient Energy brings 2.8 GW across about 145 sites in six countries: 916.8 MW in Portugal, 689.21 MW in the UK, 558.1 MW in Spain, 425.93 MW in France, 141 MW in Germany and 70.55 MW in Belgium.
- The Infrastructure Investments Fund advised by J.P. Morgan agreed in October 2021 to buy a controlling 60 percent of Falck Renewables at $10.25 per share and later secured more than 95 percent, at an enterprise value Leap records as $3.38 billion.
Why does the merger carry no price?
Because nothing is being sold to an outsider. When one owner holds both companies, combining them moves assets from one pocket to another. The investors advised by J.P. Morgan's Global Infrastructure group own Renantis and own Ventient, so there is no third party to negotiate with and no consideration that has to be published.
That is unusual for a corporate deal of this scale, but it is not unusual for the market. Price opacity is the norm in European wind platform transactions, as the benchmark below shows. What sets this deal apart is that the opacity is structural. Even a perfectly disclosed version would be an internal valuation exercise, not a market price.
The more useful question is what the owner gains by putting the two together. The answer is scale under a single management team, a single development machine and a single route to market.
What does Ventient bring to Renantis?
Most of the operating capacity. Ventient's 2.8 GW accounts for two thirds of the combined 4.2 GW. It is a pan-European non-utility developer specialising in onshore wind, and its fleet is spread across six markets, with Portugal and the UK the two largest.
Ventient was itself assembled through acquisitions, and Leap tracks the main steps. In 2019 it bought a 997 MW European wind portfolio from EDP for $901.5 million. In 2020 it acquired Iberwind in Portugal, a 726 MW platform, which goes a long way to explaining why Portugal is its largest market. In late 2021 it agreed to buy 443 MW of operating wind in Spain from Vapat. The company is now developing wind and solar colocation projects at several Iberian sites, with a further colocation pipeline of more than 1 GW of solar PV.
Colocation means building a solar plant on or beside an existing wind farm so that both share the same grid connection. Because solar tends to generate when wind is weaker, the two fill the connection more evenly than either could alone, and the new plant avoids the long wait for a fresh grid connection.
What did J.P. Morgan's fund pay for Renantis?
The only market price in this story was set two years earlier, when the fund bought Falck Renewables. In October 2021 the Infrastructure Investments Fund agreed to acquire Falck SpA's 60 percent stake at $10.25 per share in cash. That was a premium of 29.2 percent to the three-month volume weighted average share price, 40.5 percent to the six-month average and 45.2 percent to the twelve-month average.
Enerdatics understands this represented a purchase price of $1.8 billion for the 60 percent stake. The deal completed on 24 February 2022, triggering a mandatory tender offer for the remaining shares at the same price. By May 2022 the fund's vehicle held more than 95 percent of the company, at an enterprise value Leap records as $3.38 billion.
At the time, Falck's portfolio consisted of 1,036 MW of installed wind and 211 MW of installed solar, with smaller waste-to-energy and biomass assets and further capacity in construction. It also owned Vector Renewables, an asset management business serving clients with about 3,800 MW of installed capacity. That services arm is part of what the merged company will offer: energy management, asset management and technical advisory services to industrial and commercial clients.
Enerdatics records 77 corporate transactions in European wind announced between the start of 2022 and the end of 2024, and only 15 carry a value that can be expressed per megawatt. In 2023, the year of this merger, the figure was four out of 24. The Falck acquisition was the exception to that pattern: its target was listed, so the tender offer had to be priced in the open.
What does the merger signal for European onshore wind?
It signals that infrastructure funds are moving from buying platforms to building them. The pattern here is to acquire a listed operator at a public premium, then merge into it a second operator already held in the same fund family, creating a business large enough to compete with utilities for development rights, grid connections and corporate offtake.
It also shows where the growth is expected to come from. The combined pipeline of 18 GW is more than four times the installed base, and it reaches well beyond onshore wind into floating offshore wind, solar, storage and hydrogen. An onshore wind fleet with existing grid connections is a strong base for adding those technologies, which is why colocation sits so prominently in Ventient's plans. Other infrastructure investors are following the same logic, for example Actis in building a hybrid platform on an operating Polish onshore wind portfolio.
The companies began integrating straight away and expected to operate as a combined group in 2024, with Renantis leading the new organisation.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns Renantis and Ventient Energy? Both companies are owned by institutional investors advised by the Global Infrastructure group at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Renantis, formerly Falck Renewables, was acquired by the J.P. Morgan advised Infrastructure Investments Fund in 2021 and 2022.
How big is the combined Renantis and Ventient business? The combined company has 4.2 GW of installed capacity across more than 200 plants and an 18 GW development pipeline. It operates onshore wind, solar and storage assets in nine countries in Europe and the US.
How much did Renantis pay for Ventient Energy? The deal value has not been disclosed. Because both companies share the same ultimate investors, the merger did not require a price to be negotiated with an outside seller.
Ready to get deal-ready answers in seconds? Try Enerdatics Leap AI and access verified intelligence across M&A, financings, PPAs, projects, and energy market developments through natural language.
.jpeg)
