Iberdrola SA’s acquisition of Portland, ME-based Energy East Corp. for an estimated $4.5 billion closed Wednesday, Iberdrola said, marking the largest industrial transaction ever carried out by a Spanish company in the United States.

The deal grows Iberdrola’s U.S. assets to around $20 billion. The company said it expects U.S. operations to contribute 10% to total group earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization within three years.

Energy East distributes and markets power and natural gas in New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut. It has 1.83 million electricity customers and 919,000 gas customers. Sales last year were 39,000 GWh and 5.7 billion cubic meters, respectively.

The acquisition grows Iberdrola’s volume of electricity distributed by 24.7% to 198.4 TWh and its customers by 8.1% to 24 million, while raising the number of gas customers by 42.9% to 3 million. Overall installed generating capacity rises 0.2% to 42,650 MW.

Iberdrola has a presence in more than 40 countries, with a special interest in more developed and de-regulated markets, such as Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, where demand for electricity continues to grow and prices are increasingly more in line with costs, it said.

The companies obtained all the authorizations required for the acquisition, both at the state level — the state public service commissions of Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut and New York — as well at the federal level (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission).

The deal, announced in June 2007 (see Power Market Today, June 26, 2007), took 15 months to complete. In late 2006 Iberdrola made a successful $22.5 billion bid for ScottishPower (see Power Market Today, Nov. 29, 2006).

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