BAA’s costly mistake

When Spanish infrastructure group Ferrovial bought UK airport operator BAA in 2006 it could not have foreseen the problems that refinancing the acquisition debt for its purchase would create. The securitization deal was already delayed when the credit crisis developed in 2007, and since then monoline capacity has evaporated as debt spreads move steadily wider. But although the turmoil in the credit markets since mid-2007 has made the refinancing of BAA’s acquisition debt immeasurably more difficult, the deal was unlikely to have been completed anyway – as Euromoney pointed out as early as April 2007.