UK may scrap GIB sale to Macquarie - report

Offshore wind farm in British waters. Author: Beverley Goodwin. License: Creative Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

The UK government could cancel plans to sell the Green Investment Bank (GIB) to Macquarie Group Ltd (ASX:MQG) of Australia and instead go for a stock market listing, The Sunday Times reported.

Although it has not been confirmed officially, the Australian investment bank is understood to have been picked as the preferred bidder for the government-owned institution.

According to the report, the planned deal is expected to be torn up by UK business secretary Greg Clark to avert a political row in the wake of reports that Macquarie had been preparing to strip assets from the GIB.

At the same time, The Times reported today that rival bidder for the bank, the SDCL consortium, has asked its proposal to be reconsidered in view of the questions raised over the sale to Macquarie. SDCL chief executive Jonathan Maxwell was cited as saying that an initial public offering (IPO) would be attractive after several years, something that had been a consideration behind SDCL's approach to the privatisation.

A flotation could value the GIB at almost GBP 4 billion (USD 4.9bn/EUR 4.6bn), The Times noted.

More details could be expected on Wednesday, when there will be a debate on the privatisation in the House of Commons.

(GBP 1.0 = USD 1.234/EUR 1.157)

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