Cook Inlet Energy Supply LLC, a Century City-based natural gas trading and marketing firm with $3.4 billion in revenues, is being acquired by Macquarie Bank Group, Australia-based Macquarie announced on Thursday.
Cook Inlet, the largest minority-owned company in Los Angeles County, will become a wholly-owned operating subsidiary of Macquarie when the deal closes on or around Nov. 1.
The agreement calls for an all-cash transaction, said Nick O’Kane, executive director with Macquarie’s Energy Markets division in London. He declined to discuss additional terms of the deal, other than to say Cook Inlet’s 59 employees, all based in Los Angeles, will not be scaled back.
For at least the past year, Cook Inlet has been searching for a buyer or business partner to give it more of a global reach in the natural gas market.
“They have been looked at by a number of suitors,” said Dave Stillwell, president of Stillwater Associates LLC in Irvine, an energy consulting firm. “Assuming they have control of some natural gas production, selling out with natural gas prices at the current high levels is probably good for their shareholders.”
Macquarie, meanwhile, was looking to establish a beachhead in the U.S.
“The acquisition of Cook Inlet is a significant strategic step for Macquarie’s North American energy markets business,” said Andrew Down, the head of Macquarie’s treasury and commodities group, in a prepared statement.
Under terms of the deal, Cook Inlet co-founder and Chief Executive Gregory Craig and President Hans Saeby will join Macquarie as division directors and remain part of the Cook Inlet management team.
O’Kane will relocate to Los Angeles to assume overall management responsibility for Cook Inlet operations.
Craig, an Inuit native, co-founded Cook Inlet in 1989, taking its name from an inlet south of Anchorage that was first discovered by the famed British explorer James Cook.
“This transaction achieves our goals of continued strong growth for Cook Inlet and will greatly enhance our ability to more broadly serve our customers,” Craig said in a prepared statement.
