Octopus Investments increases solar portfolio financing

LONDON, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Octopus Investments has increased its solar financing to 564 million pounds ($741 million) and added new assets to its portfolio, the British fund management company said on Tuesday.

Octopus Investments is part of the Octopus Group which manages more than 7 billion pounds of funds.

Octopus Investments invests in solar, wind, biogas, biomass, landfill gas, and reserve power assets. It says it is the largest commercial solar in investor in Europe.

Earlier this year, it closed its 484 million pound solar portfolio refinancing, but said it has now added 80 million pounds of new financing from nine banks.

It has added 100 megawatts (MW) of solar assets to its portfolio, bringing the total to 622 MW, it said.

The new financing came from a syndicate which includes AIB, Barclays (LSE: BARC.L - news) , BNP Paribas (LSE: 0HB5.L - news) , CaixaBank (Amsterdam: CB6.AS - news) , Banca IMI , The Royal Bank of Scotland (Frankfurt: A0TKTZ.F - news) , Sabadell , Santander Global Corporate Banking and SMBC.

($1 = 0.7604 pounds) (Reporting by Nina Chestney; editing by Jason Neely)