A CANADIAN pension fund manager has taken full ownership of Edinburgh port business Forth Ports after buying out majority shareholder Arcus Infrastructure Partners.
Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP), which already held around a third of Forth Ports’ shares, has acquired the remainder of the business and intends to attract other pension fund investors in the near future.
Forth Ports chief executive Charles Hammond said that Arcus had been “extremely supportive” of the company, but added that the nature of the business makes it well suited to pension scheme investors.
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“If you look at the characteristics of a business like ours it’s very long term, reasonably cash generative and its asset-base quality builds up and improves over the long term,” he said.
“It’s very stable, even in difficult economic conditions, because there’s a pretty diverse range of essential commodities that come in and out of the ports.”
The business’s Scottish assets include the Port of Rosyth and Port of Dundee, both of which are being enhanced as part of Forth Ports’ investment programme. It is creating a hub for the handling of agricultural products at the former and an oil and gas decommissioning hub at the latter.
READ MORE: Profits up at Forth Ports despite oil woes in Dundee
Meanwhile, the company is awaiting development consent for a £250m expansion of its facilities at the Port of Tilbury near London.
Forth Ports, which listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1992, was taken private by Arcus in 2011 in a £751 million deal. While the fund manager initially owned the business in its entirety, it sold a 37 per cent stake to PSP soon after the transaction completed.
In its latest set of results, which were filed at Companies House last month, Forth Ports revealed that its financial position was stable in the year to December 2017. Turnover at the business nudged up from £214.4 million to £214.8m while pre-tax profit increased from £68m to £68.8m.
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