Deals: Eiffel 1, FTC corporate securitization;
Essential Public Infrastructure Capital (Epic) collateralized loan obligation
Sizes: e256.5 million; £397.1 million
Arrangers: Deutsche Bank; Merrill Lynch International
Dates: October-November 2004
Europe's two most developed public-private partnership (PPP) programmes produced a brace of innovative capital markets deals at the end of 2004.
Portugal has built more than a third of the 2,850km motorway network planned under its PPP road programme, attracting ?5.7 billion of long-term bank debt. Eiffel enables four Portuguese construction consortia (agrupamentos complementares de empresas ? ACEs) to raise money against the security of revenues from contracts for four of the country's road projects with total expected payments of ?1.293 billion. The main members of all four ACEs are three non-investment-grade construction companies.
The ACEs sell their construction contract payments to the issuer, Eiffel 1. Eiffel 1 issues fund participation units to investors. Each month,...
