Alinta

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Alinta (ASX: AAN, formerly ALN) has grown from a small, Western Australia based gas distributor and retailer to the largest energy infrastructure company in Australia. It has become known for its aggressive approach to growth through acquisition and financial engineering.^{[citation needed]}

It was formed as AlintaGas in January 1995 when the vertical monopolist energy supplier, the State Energy Commission of Western Australia, was disaggregated into separate gas and electricity corporations. On 13 July 2000 legislation was passed by the Government of Western Australia for the sale of AlintaGas which subsequently listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) on 17 October 2000.

On 8 May 2003 AlintaGas Ltd officially changed its name to Alinta Limited.

On 23 July 2003 through a series of complicated transactions involving Alinta, Aquila Inc, United Energy, and AMP Henderson Global, Alinta became the operator, manager and part owner of regulated energy assets in Western Australia and Victoria. Through this transaction it also acquired National Power Services from United Energy.^{[citation needed]}

In April 2004 Alinta acquired Duke Energy International's assets in Australia and New Zealand. In October 2004 a DUET/Alinta/Alcoa Consortium acquired the Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline from Epic Energy. Alinta Network Services was appointed as the operator and manager of the pipeline under an Operational Services Agreement.^{[citation needed]}

On 4 October 2005 Alinta publicly floated the pipelines and power stations it acquired from Duke Energy International into a separate investment vehicle, Alinta Infrastructure Holdings (AIH) which also traded on the ASX. In October 2006 Alinta, through Alinta IH Pty Ltd (Alinta IHPL), made an offer to buy out the 80% of the shareholding in AIH that it did not already own. By 11 January 2007 Alinta had acquired 91.4%, and moved to compulsorily acquire the remainder.^[1]

Alinta acquired infrastructure assets and the Agility business from AGL through a combination of merger and demerger transactions on 25 October 2006.^[2]

On 9 January 2007 Alinta announced that senior executives and the Chairman were working on a Management buyout proposal, with Macquarie Bank as their advisor.^[3]

On 11 January 2007 the chief executive officer Bob Browning resigned.

The company is being acquired by a consortium between Australia's second-largest investment bank, Babcock & Brown, and Singapore Power, the largest utility company in the city-state.^[4] after putting up a bid of A$13.9 billion, beating out a rival bid by Macquarie Bank.^[5]