Cezary Podkul
The decision, blamed on ‘adverse market conditions’, clears the way for the C$129.7bn Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to take a 10% stake in Toronto’s 407 highway. SNC had sought to block the pension’s purchase via a right of first refusal that would be exercised after the IPO.
The financing plan for the PPP calls for $150m of private activity bonds which the underwriters believe can easily be sold, according to a financing plan for the project. Barclays, Merrill Lynch and Scotia Capital have been preliminarily identified as the underwriters for the issue.
An 8.5 mile transit line to Los Angeles International Airport now has the hefty backing of the Federal government, which used its power under a discretionary grant program to make an increasingly scarce TIFIA loan for the project. This year alone, 39 projects expressed interest in TIFIA loans but only four were cleared to apply for them.
The energy investor is seeking $2.5bn in total commitments for the fund, which has attracted commitments from the Minnesota State Board of Investment and the New Mexico Public Employees Retirement System.
The city cited ‘conditions required to effectively privatise public infrastructure and the current state of capital markets’ as reasons why it would no longer seek private bidders for Louis Armstrong International Airport. The decision opens up a slot for another city to privatise its airport under a pilot privatisation programme run by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The infrastructure fund manager said in a letter to the California Department of Transportation that it has already held a first close on its debut North American infrastructure fund. Meridiam anticipates raising $1bn for the fund in the next 12 months.
The Brookfield Brazilian AgriLand Fund will buy-up pastures in Brazil and convert them to crops. The fundraising comes on the heels of a recent $2.7bn final close for the Brookfield Americas Infrastructure Fund.
The nine-member Pittsburgh city council turned down a $452m offer from a JPMorgan group, putting a final end to nearly two years of deliberations over whether to lease its parking assets. In related news, a state oversight body rejected Pittsburgh’s 2011 budget, which had assumed council would approve the deal.
The state picked a Meridiam- and Hochtief-backed team to deliver the Presidio Parkway, a reconstruction of the southern access road to San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge. If the $1.1bn project reaches financial close, it will be the state’s first PPP delivered under a 2009 law allowing PPPs statewide.
The pension disclosed that it has screened 77 investment proposals in 2010 for its infrastructure portfolio, the most of any year since it created its inflation-linked investment programme in 2007. But only two proposals converted to a due diligence review.