Headed by Paul Williams, the extremely low-profile firm has emerged as a significant European wind farm operator. It currently has a total of over 1,300MW in operation or in development. Among its assets is 648MW in existing power projects across Italy and Germany, and 35MW in Ireland. The company intends to use the newly raised funds to refinance the German and Italian wind farms and to expand its presence in the two markets. It already has an asset base worth over 1bn.

Trinergy is co-owned primarily by 45-year-old Williams and the Matrix Group, a London-based private finance house. Williams declined to comment when contacted last week. Established in 2004, the company has beefed up its board in the past year. Among its directors is Dublin solicitor and businessman James Osbourne, who sits on the boards of firms including Ryanair, PJ Carroll and Heineken Ireland. He joined the Trinergy board in August.

The company has also hired Donnchadh O'Madagain as its chief financial officer. He was previously group financial controller with RTE and also held positions with the Adare printing group and AIB, where he worked in the bank's corporate finance division. Trinergy also scored a coup with the appointment of Jim Barry as head of capital management.

He previously headed up Bank of Scotland's power project finance arm and has also worked for Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.

The 1.13bn refinancing is being spearheaded by Royal Bank of Scotland and syndication is expected to draw to a close within the next month.

It is understood that several banks have expressed strong interest in participating as Trinergy is growing rapidly and has a number of large projects due for completion. It is already the largest wind-energy developer in Italy, with 27 sites, with 120MW due for completion there next year. In Germany, Trinergy has five units and 80MW due for completion, while it has 120MW operational in Spain and 300MW in the UK.

By comparison, NTR subsidiary Airtricity currently has a total of 5,000MW in its own development pipeline. It recently acquired Canadabased Gael Force Energy, which has 4,000MW of projects under various development stages.