Qatar funds RWE’s $6.8bn green energy deal in US

Qatar funds RWE’s $6.8bn green energy deal in US

RWE is doubling down on the world’s second-biggest renewables market with the acquisition of a portfolio of US solar parks and wind farms from Consolidated Edison Inc in a $6.8bn deal funded by Qatar.

RWE late on Saturday night announced that it was acquiring the green energy arm of its New York-based peer. The transaction, which is one of the biggest green deals in US history, will be funded by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, which is providing €2.4bn of cash and will take a 9 per cent stake in the German company in return.

The funding will be provided by a mandatory convertible bond that will turn the Qatar Investment Authority into RWE’s single largest shareholder.

Qatar already holds stakes in Volkswagen and Porsche, while the country’s royal family is the single largest investor in Germany’s largest lender, Deutsche Bank.

RWE has been the country’s best-performing blue-chip over the past 12 months, with profits buoyed by large rises in electricity prices due to Europe’s worsening energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In July, it raised its profit outlook by more than third.

Over the past year, shares in RWE are up 24 per cent while the wider German market has lost