Green investment firm pulls off stellar IPO

The clean tech investment category's good health was highlighted today after one of the world's leading green investment firms pulled off a £104m IPO, blowing initial expectations out of the water and delivering the largest investment company IPO on the London Stock Exchange since July 2008.

Impax Asset Management Group plc announced that it had completed the successful IPO of its Asian-focused subsidiary Impax Asian Environmental Markets plc, issuing 104,500,000 Ordinary Shares at a price of 100 pence per Share, together with 20,900,000 Subscription Shares by way of bonus issue on the basis of one Subscription Share for every five Ordinary Shares held.

Trading of the company's shares will begin on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange tomorrow.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Impax chief executive Ian Simm said the £104.5m IPO had far exceeded initial expectations and represented a ringing endorsement for the green business sector.

"We were targeting a minimum of £50m, so the final performance is well beyond that," he said. "It's the largest IPO for an investment company since July last year and to achieve that in a market that is still quite fragile is really gratifying."

Impax Asian Environmental Markets will look to invest in green and clean tech companies from across Asia that qualify for the FTSE's environmental markets classification.

Allan McKenzie, chairman of Impax Asian Environmental Markets, said the company was anticipating significant growth from the market.

"The strong level of support we have received from investors demonstrates our conviction that the Asian environmental sector is an exciting, long-term growth area," he said. "We believe that the key drivers of the Asia environmental markets – market liberalisation, tightening environmental policy and falling costs of new technology – will continue to generate highly attractive investment opportunities."

His comments were echoed by Simm, who said that many companies operating in environmental markets were continuing to offer investors attractive returns. " We are still seeing excellent returns across the categories we operate in," he said. "We are seeing average returns in the mid teens and some sectors are hitting 20 per cent."

He added that the investment firm was also in the process of putting together the company's second private equity fund, and was continuing to expand rapidly, having recently secured a €150m (£136m) deal with an unnamed European institutional investor.