Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what information was supplied to each bidder who expressed an interest in purchasing UK Green Investment Bank on the assets, structures and investments of that bank; and whether that information was supplied in the same form to each bidder.

As set out in the Government’s report to Parliament on 3rd March 2016 entitled “Green Investment Bank: sale of shares”, parties that met the qualifying requirements set out in the bidder information form were supplied with a confidential Information Memorandum with further information on GIB’s business and also a process letter that explained how the sale process would be conducted and further information that would be provided during the sale process.

In the first round, bidders were asked to submit non-binding initial bids based on the confidential Information Memorandum and Round 1 information. The proposals received were evaluated and selected parties invited to proceed to the second round of the process. At this stage, potential bidders were provided with detailed additional information to enable them to carry out due diligence on GIB. Bidders were also given access to confidential data with further detailed due diligence reports, transaction documents and received presentations about the business plan and investments from GIB’s management team, as well as having an option to make use of a question & answer process. Following due diligence, interested parties were invited to submit formal, final and binding offers.

All bidders were provided with equal opportunity to access the same information at each stage in the process.