UBS Investment Bank, Piper Jaffray and Citi are acting as the joint book-running managers, with Simmons & Company International acting as a co-manager for the offering.”

Read more: Gevo

In a statement on Wednesday, Enel said it received the go-ahead for the publication of its EGP IPO prospectus from market regulator Consob, confirming what a source familiar with the matter had told Reuters earlier.

Enel, Europe’s most indebted utility, hopes to raise at least 3 billion euros ($4.18 billion) by selling a minority stake of up to almost a third of its Green Power unit to help cut debt and protect its credit rating.

If it went through, it would be the biggest IPO since Spain’s Iberdrola raised 4.1 billion euros from listing its renewable unit in December 2007.

In its statement, Enel said it asked Consob to send the Spanish market regulator (CNMV) an approval certificate stating the prospectus had been drawn up in line with European regulations.

Enel, which controls Spanish utility Endesa, plans to launch the EGP IPO on the Milan and Madrid stock markets.

Sources have told Reuters that the IPO roadshow is expected to kick off on October 18, with a final price expected to be set around October 29 and a listing at the start of November.

At the beginning of October, a source said the utility had set a pre-marketing price range between 1.9 and 2.4 euros per share for the offering, with a final price range expected after Consob approval. The source said EGP had an overall 5 billion shares.

ANCHOR INVESTORS

Enel is actively seeking foreign long-term investors for Enel Green Power, and a source close to the deal said on Wednesday it is in touch with Middle Eastern and Asian sovereign wealth funds, hoping they will take stakes of 2 to 3 percent each.

A second source close to the operation had told Reuters in August that the company was sounding out sovereign wealth funds. Before then, Enel CEO Fulvio Conti had excluded talks with sovereign funds.

Enel is considering the possibility of a direct sale to a large investor as an alternative to listing its unit, but time is running out for this option, the two sources said.

“We have still not called off the dual-track approach to the sale, but there is a high probability it will be an IPO,” Enel Green Power Executive Vice President Roberto Deambrogio told Reuters last week.

The IPO is attracting interest among foreign investment funds specializing in renewable energy, which could also become “cornerstone investors” in the IPO, one of the sources said.

“We are very much interested since it is a pure-play renewable energy utility like Iberdrola Renovables,” Matthias Fawer, vice president of Sarasin Sustainable Investment at Swiss Sarasin Bank, told Reuters on Wednesday.

A member of the EGP banking syndicate told Reuters at the start of September that a trade sale would likely imply ceding some preferred rights and that Enel would be wary since it could hinder control of one of its fastest-growing units.”

Read more: Reuters

Deutsche Bank Securities, Goldman, Sachs & Co and J.P. Morgan will act as joint book-running managers for the offering. Co-lead managers of the transaction are Baird, Cannacord Genuity, Piper Jaffray, RBC Capital Markets and Stephens Inc.

16.2 million ADSs will be offered for sale. Of the 16.2 million ADSs, 10.3 million ADSs (approximately 64 percent of the offering, based on the mid-point of the price range) will represent new shares issued by Elster Group SE and the remainder will be offered by direct or indirect shareholders of Elster. An overallotment option of up to 2.43 million additional ADSs (15 percent of the ADSs being offered) will also be available from Rembrandt Holdings, Elster’s largest shareholder, which is owned by funds advised by CVC Capital Partners. Elster expects to receive net proceeds of approximately $152 million from the offering, which it intends to use to repay a portion of its outstanding debt.

Assuming completion of the offering and a full exercise of the over-allotment option, Elster’s free float will be approximately 18.6 percent.

The Elster ADSs will be offered to institutional and retail investors in the United States and to institutional investors outside of the United States. The ticker symbol for Elster on the New York Stock Exchange will be ELT.”

Source: Press Release

According to Reuters, “U.S. electric sports car maker Tesla Motors plans to go public soon, two sources familiar with the matter said, amid growing interest in green technology and battery-powered vehicles.

An IPO filing from the six-year-old start-up, best known for its $109,000 all-electric Roadster, is expected any day, said one of the sources. The person did not give a specific time frame, although IPOs typically take several months.

Tesla spokesman Ricardo Reyes declined to comment on what he called “rumor or speculation.”

Tesla would mark the first public offering from a U.S. automaker since Henry Ford’s Ford Motor Co debuted its shares in 1956. The IPO represents a landmark in the resurgence of electric car technology that most carmakers had dismissed as impractical until recently.

The company’s chairman Elon Musk said early last year that an IPO was a possibility in either late 2008 or 2009.

But the financial market turmoil following the collapse of Lehman Bros. in the latter half of 2008 virtually shut down the IPO market. The appetite for IPOs has picked up since mid-September this year with a robust pace of new filings.

Tesla’s IPO would follow the successful debut of lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems, whose shares rallied 50 percent on their first day of trading on Sept 25.

Analysts have said that the success of A123, the first green technology IPO this year, would encourage more venture capital-backed green companies to go public.

Tesla will compete with established automakers like Ford, General Motors and Nissan Motor Co, all of which are racing to launch electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles. Tesla, by contrast, is a small player with a high-end market and limited production.

A combination of factors has driven the recent interest in developing electric, or partially electric vehicles, including the Obama administration’s push to have one million rechargeable vehicles on US roads by 2015 and low-cost Department of Energy loans for manufacturers.

VENTURE FUNDS BACK GREEN CARS

The carmaker is developing a second, lower-cost model, an electric sedan known as the Model S, which will have a base price of $49,900.

Tesla said in September it delivered 700 Roadsters since February 2008. The Roadster, which is built on a Lotus frame, can go from zero to sixty miles an hour in less than four seconds, making it faster than a Porsche 911 or a Ferrari Spider.

The electric car start-up was offered $465 million in low-cost loans by the U.S. Department of Energy to help build the new Model S. Tesla said it will build the new car in California.

Tesla’s investors include Google Inc founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Other investors include Daimler AG; Abu Dhabi-based Aabar Investments, which owns a stake in Daimler; and venture capital funds Valor Equity Partners, Technology Partners, The Westly Group and Compass Venture Partners.

Tesla said it had achieved overall corporate profitability in July with about $1 million of earnings on revenue of $20 million. But like established automakers, survival in the hyper-competitive U.S. automotive market has not been easy for Tesla. The company had to face cost overruns and production delays for the Roadster.”

Source: Reuters