Malaysian utility Tenaga buys $243 mln stake in Turkish power firm

KUALA LUMPUR - Reuters

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Malaysia’s state electricity utility, Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) has bought a 30 percent stake in Turkey’s GAMA Enerji A.S. for $243 million to expand overseas, it said on Dec. 14.

“This investment is an important step in TNB’s strategy of expanding into international markets where power demand is rising. It is in line with TNB’s five-year international expansion roadmap to secure new overseas generation capacity,” TNB Chairman Tan Sri Leo Moggie said in the statement.

The partnership will give TNB two seats on GAMA Enerji’s board with extensive control rights, the company said.

The announcement comes just days after Tenaga, whose top shareholder is sovereign wealth fund Khazanah, lost a bid to buy the power assets of state fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) in November.

Shares in Tenaga shot up after that announcement on relief it had effectively avoided bailing out the state fund.

GAMA Enerji is a power and water infrastructure development company, which owns and operates thermal, wind and hydro assets in Turkey. It currently has an 840MW natural gas-fired plant and a 45 MW wind power plant under construction in Turkey.