Christmas has come early for shareholders in National Gridand its bankers. The power infrastructure company has agreed to sell a 61 per cent stake in its UK gas distribution network for some £5.4bn. Investors will get £4bn in dividends and buybacks, albeit not before completion next year. Banks including Morgan Stanley, Robey Warshawand Barclayswill get nice year-end league table credits and, in time a share of deal fees and other sale costs estimated at a whopping £500m.

The transaction gives National Grid an exit from a legacy UK gas distribution business growing at a sluggish 2 per cent annually. That allows the utility, under the punctilious new management of John Pettigrew, to concentrate on UK electricity, which is raising revenues 5 per cent a year and a US business increasing at 7 per cent.

Inflation-linked yields are the lure for the purchaser, a consortium led by Macquarie and featuring Chinese and Qatari wealth funds. That capital insurance must appear particularly valuable when pundits detect a nascent fall in the value of money.

The consortium may buy a further 14 per cent stake at similar terms. National Grid could be out of this sluggish industry altogether in a year or two. This first step allows the company to deconsolidate UK gas distribution from its accounts.

The consortium is paying just £3.6bn for its initial stake. National Grid will receive a £1.8bn top up from a debt issue by the distributor, but will hang on to £700m of that for its own purposes. Around £150m will subsidise consumers at a time of political sabre-rattling over energy prices.

The sale price, through which the likes of top boutique banker Simon Robey are earning their corn, looks on the face of it a decent one. An implied enterprise value for the business of £13.8bn is 1.5 times the regulated asset base, 20 per cent above average industry sale prices. Cynical shareholders should adjust the valuation to reflect costs — including that public guilt payment — that will eat up almost 10 per cent of the sale price.