3rd Mar 2008 13:54
Scottish & Southern Energy PLC03 March 2008 SCOTTISH AND SOUTHERN ENERGY PLC ACQUISITION OF STREET LIGHTING BUSINESS Scottish and Southern Energy plc ("SSE") has entered into an agreement with EDFEnergy to acquire Seeboard Trading Limited, which finances and operates streetlighting replacement and maintenance projects for three local authorities in thesouth of England under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). The total cashconsideration is £7.8m. The three local authorities are the London Borough of Islington, the LondonBorough of Ealing and Dorset County Council. The projects cover around 90,000street lighting columns and they all have at least 20 years to run. Through its subsidiary, Southern Electric Contracting, and in partnership withthe asset finance division of The Royal Bank of Scotland, SSE already has PFIcontracts to replace and maintain around 210,000 street lighting columns forfour local authorities in England: Stoke on Trent City Council; Leeds CityCouncil; Newcastle City Council and North Tyneside Council. These contracts allhave over 20 years to run. In addition to the PFI replacement and maintenance contracts, SSE has contractswith 22 local authorities in England, Wales and Scotland to maintain over onemillion street lights. This includes a contract with St Helens Council, whichwas recently signed and which is SSE's first in the north west of England. It isnow the largest street lighting contractor in the UK. Around 70 employees will transfer to SSE as a result of the acquisition. Colin Hood, Chief Operating Officer of SSE, said: "This is a very good acquisition, which reinforces our position as the UK'sleading street lighting contractor. Additional street lighting PFI contracts arenow unlikely to be awarded before 2010, and so this is a unique opportunity tobuild further our presence in this increasingly important sector. "The PFI approach has emerged as an excellent way of replacing ageing streetlighting infrastructure. Our existing PFI projects have been successful and havedelivered real benefits to communities. We will now ensure that best practiceapplies across our enlarged group of contracts, so that local authorities andlocal residents benefit from the successful delivery of our approach." -ends- This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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