Michael Lacey-Solymar, a director in charge of Investec's new-energy sector, said he has a simple response for those who think his company may move or downsize IdaTech after making the purchase for an undisclosed amount.

"Absolutely not," Lacey-Solymar said from London. "It's quite the reverse, actually. We want to grow that business."

Calling IdaTech "a potential world leader" in hydrogen fuel cell technology, Lacey-Solymar said he visited the firm's Bend facility in May and came away highly impressed with the technology being developed.

He noted specifically the sales potential of IdaTech's commercial products, like the ElectroGen3 and ElectroGen5 fuel cell power generators.

Most fuel cell makers in Europe have not reached a stage where they can offer commercial fuel cell products, Lacey-Solymar said.

IdaTech currently employs 65 people in Central Oregon.

Hal Koyama, senior vice president of sales and marketing with IdaTech, said Investec officials closely inspected his company's operations for two months before making the purchase.

"Obviously, they liked what they saw," Koyama said. "Being put under the microscope, and then coming out of it with such a positive investment, it increases our confidence."

IdaTech was owned by Boise-based utilities company IdaCorp Inc. since 1999. The fuel cell maker, founded in 1996 as Northwest Power Systems, remains a symbol of Bend's push to attract technology firms to the region.

City officials gave the company $30,000 in incentives in 2004 to coax the company to stay in Bend.

IdaCorp's financial reports indicate that IdaTech lost about $2 million in the first quarter this year. The fuel cell maker lost roughly $8 million in 2005 and $5 million in 2004.

"IdaTech has been an earnings drag (on IdaCorp) for as long as they've owned it," said James Bellessa, vice president and senior analyst for D.A. Davidson & Co. in Great Falls, Mont.

Bellessa, who covers IdaCorp, said the utilities company will record a gain of $10 million to $11 million in its third-quarter report from the sale. That doesn't indicate the value of the transaction, however, because it doesn't show how much IdaTech was losing since the start of the second quarter April 1, Bellessa said.

Either way, he wasn't surprised by the deal.

"They made some investments in the nonregulated energy sector," Bellessa said, noting IdaCorp's sale of a solar power company a few years ago. "It didn't really work out for them."

But Investec's Lacey-Solymar isn't concerned about IdaTech's profitability.

"There isn't a fuel-cell-producing company in the world that's profitable right now," he said. "(A company) has to develop that technology, develop its products and then find markets for it."

Fuel cells use chemical reactions to turn hydrogen into electricity, with water as the only by-product.

Lacey-Solymar said that IdaTech had to compete with other fuel cell generator makers to provide an eight-kilowatt-per-day generator to an art display in London, part of an event preceding that city's hosting of the 2012 Olympics.

"They went in and they won it," Lacey-Solymar said. "It's an example of what (IdaTech) can do, and we're going to help them open more doors."

Investec, a specialty banking group established in 1974, has been investing in companies in the energy industry for the past few years.

One such investment is Australia's Global Ethanol Holdings, in which Investec holds a 70 percent stake. Global Ethanol recently bought a 60 percent stake in the Midwest Grain Processors Co-operative, the largest farmer-owned ethanol producer in the United States.

IdaTech's Koyama said the new parent company, with $1.7 billion in net operating income in the year that ended March 31, will inject the Bend operation with capital and give it new contacts in markets such as Great Britain, South Africa and Australia.

"There (in Europe), they tend to be more sensitive towards renewable energy and activities tend to be more concentrated in that market," Koyama said. "(Investec) has a number of contacts in a number of those places, which we've identified as our target markets."

About 70 percent of IdaTech's current business is outside North America, mostly in Europe. But the acquisition by a European company doesn't mean IdaTech will abandon the North American market, Koyama said.

"We're seeing equal potential in North America (compared to Europe), if not more so," he said. "We'll staff (the respective markets) depending on the growth of one versus the other. And we intend to keep motoring on our path."