Double deal sees John Laing enter German broadband fibre, exit some renewable energy
Laing is spending up to e100 million to buy the firms and fund the rollout of fibre for the next three years.
As with BT Openreach in the UK, Germany has a big incumbent in Deutsche Telekom but smaller firms are snapping at its heels to supply the market.
Britain’s ICG also recently spotted the opportunity to make money in a market where only 10% of homes have fibre to the premises.
The deal was announced at the same time as Laing CEO Ben Loomes sold its Irish wind farm, Glencarbry to Greencoat Renewables for e31.2 million - a 6% premium on its book value and a 1.3 times return on its original investment.
Looney explained that Laing was getting out of renewable energy production to focus more on the infrastructure behind it.
“We’re looking at storage - batteries - electric vehicle charging points, perhaps electification of buses,” he said.
Renewable energy production was now seeing the giant financial players and companies like BP and Shell come in. “It has just become very competitive so we are looking at the supporting infrastructure,” he told the Evening Standard.
Around 40% of Laing’s projects are in North America, where Joe Biden has just launched a near-$2 trillion infrastructure building project as part of the US’s stimulus programme to fight back from the economic damage of covid.
Loomes said: “It is great news. A lot of it is catch-up investment for road and rail that has been neglected but now with the Biden plan for new infrastructure it will be either digital - like broadband - or lower carbon energy. We are seeing that same trend in all other markets.”
