Three firms are vying to buy a minority stake of up to 49% in Iberdrola's "Baltic Eagle" offshore wind farm off the German coast, newspaper Expansion reported on Friday, citing unidentified market sources.
The top candidates for the transaction valued at around 700 million euros ($769 million) are Abu Dhabi's Masdar, Swiss fund EIP and Australian asset manager Macquarie's green investing arm GIG, Expansion said.
The sale is part of Iberdrola's strategy to sell advanced renewable projects to raise cash to partly finance its 47 billion euro investment plan.
Iberdrola and Macquarie declined to comment while the two other potential buyers did not immediately return messages seeking comments.
According to Expansion, Masdar was best positioned out of the three candidates to win the tender.
Iberdrola expects to close the deal in May, Expansion added.
($1 = 0.9098 euros)
(Reuters - Reporting by David Latona, Pietro Lombardi and Inti Landauro; Editing by Mark Potter)
