John Laing Environmental Assets Group Limited (JLEN) yesterday announced that it had raised gross proceeds of £160 million in its placing and initial public offering of ordinary shares.

The amount raise falls slightly short of the £174 million originally targeted by the investment fund, which is backed by infrastructure giant John Laing.

The proceeds of the issue will be used to acquire a initial portfolio from John Laing, which consists of investment interests in:

• one solar project (Amber Solar);
• three onshore wind farm projects (Bilsthorpe Wind, Castle Pill & Ferndale Wind and Hall Farm Wind);
• two waste processing projects (D&G Waste and ELWA Waste); and
• one wastewater treatment project (Tay Wastewater).

Following Admission, John Laing Investments Limited will hold 39.7 % of the voting rights attached to the issued share capital of the company.

A fund managed by the Henderson Group, owner of John Laing Group, and certain directors of the John Laing Group also subscribed a certain number of shares that add 1.6% of the total.

Richard Morse, Non-Executive Chairman, JLEN said:

"We are pleased by the response to the JLEN capital raise, recognising our differentiated product offering. JLEN's balanced portfolio of operating environmental infrastructure assets, our relationship with John Laing and our ability to provide a long-term, sustainable, inflation-linked dividend enabled us to attract a good mix of institutional and private investors."

The company expects that the ordinary shares will be admitted to the London Stock Exchange at 8.00 a.m. on Monday 31 March 2014. The company's ticker symbol will be JLEN.

The John Laing Environmental Assets (JLEN) fund is targeting returns of between 7.5 % and 8.5 %, offering inflation-linked annualised dividends of 6p per share.