Exclusive | CLP to buy assets to expand, as it aims to be the first Hong Kong utility to sell shares in India IPO

CLP Holdings, the larger of Hong Kong’s two power utilities, aims to double the size of its India unit via acquisitions and new-build projects in the next five years and list it on the local bourse, according to its finance chief.

It is the joint ambition of CLP and its new partner, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), the Canadian public pension-fund manager that recently bought a 40 per cent stake in the unit from CLP, said Geert Peeters, a 30-year industry veteran and Belgian national who grew up in Rwanda in a missionary family.

“As part of the partnership agreement, there is an ambitious business plan where both parties commit to grow [the business],” he told the South China Morning Post in his first interview with the Hong Kong media since joining CLP in 2014. “The ambition is to be about twice as big as we are now in five years.”

If it achieves that target, the unit will reach the “critical mass” scale suitable for a potential initial public offering on an Indian bourse, he said.

He emphasised that the stake sale to CDPQ and the potential shares sale through IPO are not moves to “sell out”, but rather to bring in strategic partners and local ownership to help it tap opportunities amid India’s fast-growing energy needs, especially low-carbon electricity.

“We have a strong belief that sustainable infrastructure is only sustainable if it is also owned by the communities that pay for it,” he said, declining to give a time frame for the IPO. “The Indian middle class has been building up savings, some of which were used to buy bonds such as the green bond we issued.”