Linklaters has advised the consortium made up of  Borealis Infrastructure Management Inc. and Swedish national pension funds Första AP-Fonden (AP 1), and Tredje AP-Fonden (AP 3), and Swedish mutual insurance and pension savings company Folksam on the financing of its acquisition of Fortum’s electricity distribution business in Sweden. A binding agreement was signed for this today, with completion expected in Q2 2015.

The total consideration is approximately EUR 6.6 billion, making it the largest infrastructure acquisition in Europe for several years.

Fortum's electricity distribution business in Sweden owns and operates approximately 71,000 km of electricity distribution and regional networks and
distributes electricity to some 906,000 customers. The volume of distributed electricity in distribution network was 13.7 TWh in 2014. Fortum's market share of the local electricity distribution in Sweden is approximately 17%.

The Linklaters team advising the consortium was led by infrastructure partner Ian Andrews, who says: “This is the leading deal in the market this year and one of the largest and most complex for some time. It is a real credit to the consortium and we are delighted to have been able to help them achieve this success”.