By JIM BUTLER

Whatever profit is involved in the sale of Cleco it is safe to say it’s big bucks.

Macquarie Asset Management and others bought the Pineville-based utility in 2016 and took it private, expressing intent to hold it for a decade.

Sale price then was about $3.4 billion, the purchasing power equivalent of about $4.2 billion today. Sale price in the deal announced Monday: $5.8-$6 billion.

Stonepeak and Bernhard Capital Partners are buying a package much different than the one of a decade ago, a result of changing market conditions, infrastructure upgrades and Nature-driven overhauls (remember Laura and her siblings?).

Stonepeak’s chairman once worked for Macquarie; Bernhardt Capital, quartered in Baton Rouge, is led by Jeff Jenkins, its co-founder with the late and legendary Jim Barnhard.

Purchasers pledge to keep the firm in Pineville and retain employees.

The sale requires PSC approval, but no stockholders vote as was necessary a decade ago.

At that time holders of about 60.5 million shares of common stock received $55.37 per share and the equity group took the utility private.

A class action over the merger process, initiated by three of those stockholders on behalf of the class eventually certified in 2019, was resolved in late 2023 with a mediated settlement of $37 million allocated to the class members.

Cleco to be acquired by Stonepeak and Bernhard Capital Partners