Telepass, 3.5 billion from Apg to Infravia
100% of the company is up for sale. Also in the running are the Brisa consortium, Advent and Bending Spoon
by Carlo Festa
For the Telepass dossier, which is coming to a head right now with non-binding offers, there is a race between infrastructure and private equity funds, foreign strategic groups and technology companies.
The current shareholders of Telepass, 51% controlled by the Mundys Group and 49% by Partners Group, have a few months ago begun an exploratory process aimed at probing the possible sale of 100% of the company, the big name in the electronic toll collection system that allows automatic payment of motorway tolls in Italia and Europe.
The transaction could be worth over EUR 3.5 billion. Some potential buyers have already submitted their non-binding offers in the last few days, others are standing at the window. There is time until midnight tonight to send them to the advisors Mediobanca and Ubs. Between four and six groupings are in the running with a non-binding offer. Among the possible buyers is the international fund Advent, which was already interested in the Telepass transaction in 2021, when it entered with a 40% Partners Group stake.
But a consortium formed by the Portuguese motorway multinational Brisa, which already owns the Via Verde electronic tolling system, is also being formed. Brisa is reportedly in discussions to form a grouping with the Dutch pension fund manager Apg and the infrastructure fund Stonepeak.
Then the dossier would be on the table of the French infrastructure group InfraVia Capital Partners. Finally, surprise among the players in the field would also be Bending Spoons, one of Europe's leading technology companies and a successful app developer. The Milan-based company has made a number of important international acquisitions in the space of a short time.
