Barclays agrees £98m purchase of carbon offset outfit Tricorona

Barclays today moved to beef up its presence in the expanding carbon market, announcing that it has agreed a £98m cash offer for Swedish carbon offset project developer Tricorona.

The British banking giant confirmed that its wholly owned Swedish subsidiary TAV AB has tabled a SEK8.00 (70p)-per-share cash offer to acquire all the shares in Stockholm-listed Tricorona, representing a 40 per cent premium on yesterday's closing price.

The offer has been unanimously recommended by the board of Tricorona and just over 20 per cent of the company's shareholders have already agreed to accept the offer. The bid is now subject to standard closing conditions, but Barclays said that it expects the acquisition to be completed by the autumn.

Tricorona, which was founded in 1998 and now employs 69 people at offices in Sweden, China, Singapore and Japan, is one of the leading developers and traders in the market for UN-backed Certified Emission Reduction (CER) carbon offset credits.

Barclays said the deal would build on Barclays Capital's existing reputation in the carbon markets and "position it as a leading global origination and trading house". In particular, the deal will significantly bolster the company's position as an investor in emission reduction projects, as well as a trader of the resulting carbon credits.

Barclays is not the first major bank to acquire a carbon offset specialist – JP Morgan has acquired ClimateCare and EcoSecurities in the past two years – but the deal will further bolster confidence that the offset sector is emerging from the recession.

The agreement also comes just days after the UN board that manages the CER market through its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) announced that it had agreed new rules designed to simplify the issuing of CER credits.

The board said last week that it had introduced a number of new procedures designed to accelerate the development of CDM projects, including new guidelines for assessing whether smaller projects will deliver "additional" emission reductions and the introduction of a loan scheme to help fund projects in countries with fewer than 10 CDM-approved developments.