Houston-based Dynegy, Inc. announced yesterday that it had agreed to sell its natural-gas-processing business for $2.48 billion to Houston-based Targa Resources Inc., the energy company that private-equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC founded. As a part of the deal, Targa Resources will also acquire Dynegy’s storage, transportation, distribution, fractionation and marketing assets.
With this sale, Dynegy becomes solely a power generator that would be a prime acquisition target of other energy companies. The sale is the latest move in a restructuring plan that Dynegy undertook after the company was nearly drawn into its own reorganization case in the the bankruptcy wake of its acquisition target Enron Corp. in late 2001. Last year, Dynegy sold its Illinois Power utility to St. Louis-based Ameren Corp. for $500 million in cash and $1.8 billion in assumed debt and preferred stock.