Roche firm buys 6% of NTR for €77.4m

THE ROCHE family has invested over €77.4 million to increase their interest in NTR.

In a statement yesterday, NTR said that Dreamport Limited had acquired 11,910,516 shares in the company at a price of €6.50 each. The 5.98 per cent holding in the company was acquired from Standard Life Investments.

Dreamport, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Woodford Capital Ltd, now holds 78.86 million shares, or 39.6 per cent of NTR. NTR chairman Tom Roche and his family control Woodford Capital. His siblings own a further stake of around 7.4 per cent in the group.

It was unclear last night whether Standard Life retains any interest in NTR. If it does, any holding will be nominal. Standard Life has been one of the most significant investors in NTR over the past two decades.

It first invested in the company in a placing organised by stockbroker Davy at the time of the announcement of plans by NTR for the West Link toll bridge project in 1987. Until the arrival of Philip Lynch and his One51 investment group on the share register in late 2004, the Scottish group had been the largest shareholder in NTR outside the Roche family.

NTR booked a profit of €830.8 million following the disposal of its windfarm unit Airtricity and the sale to the Government of its interest in the West Link toll bridge last year.

The company distributed €275 million of that to shareholders in a "liquidity event" approved at an extraordinary general meeting in June.

Constructed as a share buyback for reasons of tax efficiency, that distribution came 15 months earlier than had previously been suggested by the company.

Standard Life, which was at that time still the third largest shareholder in the group, received a payment of €20.35 million, while the Roche family received €118 million.

Shares were redeemed at a price of €6.65 at that time. The price, set in early June, had been a 15 per cent premium to the €5.75 at which the stock was trading at the time on the grey market.

In a volatile and generally negative market that has seen the Irish Stock Exchange lose 29.5 per cent of its value since early June, NTR's shares are trading ahead of the grey market valuation in June on the basis of yesterday's announcement and are just five cent lower than the buyback price.