Barclays has announced it is buying Swedish carbon trading company Tricorona for £98 million.
The UK bank said today that it was acquiring the Stockholm-listed
carbon developer in a cash deal via its Swedish subsidiary TAV AB.
Barclays has offered to pay SKr8 (£0.70) for each share in
Tricorona – 40 per cent more than what they were worth on the closing price in Stockholm on Tuesday.
Tricorona specialises in the sourcing, development and trading of
carbon emission reduction credits from greenhouse gas reduction projects in developing countries.
Barclays already operates in the
carbon emissions trading business and is the largest provider of liquidity to the
EU Emissions Tradition Scheme (EU ETS), the largest carbon trading market in the world. Barclays said the deal to buy Tricorona would "position it as a leading global origination and trading house".
The global carbon market was worth £100 billion in 2009, according to the World Bank. Over six billion European Union Allowances were traded on EU ETS in 2009 compared to three billion on 2008.
Challenging period for carbon market
However, the market also faced its most challenging period last year, brought on by the world economic crisis and political uncertainty post 2012, when the UN’s climate change treaty the Kyoto Protocol is due to expire. Project-based transactions declined by 54 per cent to £2.3 billion in 2009 with the Clean Development Mechanism, the carbon trading mechanism for carbon emission reduction credits from greenhouse gas reduction projects in developing countries, worst hit.
Barclays said the deal to buy Tricorona had been agreed by over 20 per cent of the company’s shareholders, who had entered into "irrevocable undertakings" to accept the offer. It is expected to completed in the third quarter of 2010.
Tricorona last year, failed to buy Aim-quoted developer and supplier of emissions reductions, EcoSecurities. The company has since been bought by JP Morgan.
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