Sidley Advises Senior Lender on Xpansiv’s Acquisition of Evident

Sidley has acted as legal counsel to senior lender Ambienta on Xpansiv Limited’s (Xpansiv) acquisition of Evident Group Limited (Evident). Ambienta is a leading European investment firm with more than €4 billion in assets under management, focused on sustainable and environmental investing across private equity, public markets, and private credit.

The agreement, in which Xpansiv has wholly acquired Evident, follows an earlier minority investment by Xpansiv. Xpansiv operates the market infrastructure to scale the world’s energy transition, including renewable energy certificate (REC) registries North American Renewables Registry (NAR) and Tradable Instrument for Global Renewables Registry (TIGR), as well as CBL, the largest spot exchange for environmental commodities, while Evident is a global authority in the certification of the clean economy and operates several registries including its namesake I-REC(E) registry. The acquisition creates a world-leading clean energy registry network, uniting the renewable energy certificate registries of Evident and Xpansiv with a global capacity of over 300 GW.

The acquisition comes as global demand for renewable energy and RECs is growing sharply, driven by electricity consumption by data centers, electric vehicles, and other sources – an industry of which Sidley is at the forefront, regularly advising on infrastructure and energy matters.

The cross-practice Sidley team was led by Global Finance partner Ben Thompson in London. He was supported by a team including Chloe Smith, Harry John Webb, and Jack Renner (Global Finance).