(Adds names of bidders, details, background)
By Ron Bousso and Arno Schuetze
LONDON/FRANKFURT, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Swedish buyout groupEQT has received offers for its Dutch oil storage group KooleTerminals valuing the business at more than 1 billion euros($1.1 bln), several people familiar with the deal said.
The investor last week collected more than 10 tentativebids, mainly from infrastructure investors, and will now pickseveral groups to submit final bids, the sources, who declinedto be identified, said on Monday.
A consortium of Canadian pension fund OTPP and Wren HouseInfrastructure has made an offer, as has Borealis, theinfrastructure arm of pension fund OMERS, bidding alongsideFirst State Investments, they said.
The infrastructure arms of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Macquarie are also in the running as areinfrastructure-focused private equity groups like ArcLightCapital, they added.
Morgan Stanley is advising EQT on the sale, the sourcessaid.
EQT, Morgan Stanley and the bidders declined to comment orwere not immediately available for comment.
Since the collapse in oil prices in mid-2014, there has beenstrong demand for mid-stream storage and pipeline assets due totheir stable valuations compared to oil exploration andproduction assets.
Investors speculating to sell oil at higher prices in thefuture have also increased demand for storage assets and madethe business of storing oil highly profitable.
Koole is expected to post earnings before interest, taxes,depreciation and amortization of roughly 80-90 million eurosthis year, the sources said.
EQT is hoping to reap 14-15 times that in a potential deal,in line with the multiples paid in Vopak's sale ofU.S. terminals to Kinder Morgan earlier this year and ofANZ Terminals to Macquarie last year.
EQT bought Koole in 2011 and has expanded the business withseveral bolt-on acquisitions such as terminals from Westway,NOVA and BP, which in January also announced the sale ofanother European oil storage asset.
Koole is held by EQT's fully invested fund Infrastructure I,which has divested three companies this year - Denmark's NORD, U.S.-based RTI and Sweden's Swedegas.
Bankers are preparing debt packages of around 6.5 times coreearnings to back infrastructure bidders, totalling up to 585million euros of debt financing expected to be in the form ofloans.
The loans could comprise a five-year facility and athree-year bridge facility, which will be taken out via the bondmarket. Any debt financing backing a private equity firm islikely to involve higher leveraged multiples. ($1 = 0.8833 euros) (Additional reporting by Claire Ruckin and Freya Berry; Editingby Maria Sheahan and Susan Fenton)
BP (BP.)
