Applegreen’s shareholders have approved its acquisition of a controlling stake in motorway service area (MSA) operator Welcome Break, and the company anticipates the transaction will complete on or around 31 October.
The deal was approved at an EGM which also gave the green light to a share placing to part fund the acquisition.
Applegreen has raised €175m (£156m) through a share placing with existing and new institutions.
In an announcement on September 28 revealing the new funding the company said the share offer was “significantly oversubscribed”.
The new shares represent 23.9% of the company’s share capital, and give it a market capitalisation of €732.6m (£654.1m).
The acquisition will make Applegreen one of the big three MSA operators in Britain, and is the largest acquisition it has made.
Welcome Break operates 24 motorway service areas, two trunk road service areas and 29 hotels across 35 locations, and employs more than 5,000 people.
Applegreen has award-winning MSAs in Ireland, and has applied for planning permission to build MSAs in England, but it does not currently own any British MSAs.
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