Holland & Knight advised Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional (FDN), Colombia's infrastructure development bank, as credit enhancement provider in connection with the Costera Cartagena-Baranquilla project financing, which is part of Colombia’s fourth generation (4G) road infrastructure plan. The final structure, arranged by Goldman Sachs & Co., includes five tranches of secured debt, including two series of international project bonds. The transaction closed on July 8.
The secured subordinated liquidity facility provides liquidity to finance certain cost overruns during construction of the project and to pay scheduled debt service on the senior debt.
The Costera Cartagena-Barranquilla project entails work on a 159.29 km stretch of roadways, including access roads and second carriageways, that is scheduled to be completed in 2020 at a cost of more than $850 million. Under the terms of the concession agreement, the project includes the design, construction, improvement, maintenance, operation and exploitation of the toll road that will connect Cartagena, Colombia’s fifth largest city by population, and Barranquilla, the largest city and port in the northern Caribbean coastal region of Colombia.
Over the next eight years, 4G is expected to deliver 7,000 km of roads in three waves via public-private partnerships, requiring an investment of US$14.1 billion.
Holland & Knight partner Norberto E. Quintana, in New York and Miami, led the team of lawyers advising FDN. The team included partner Enrique Gómez-Pinzón and associate Juliana Saa in Bogotá and foreign visiting attorney Mariana Guzian in Miami. Senior counsel Gabriel Caballero in Miami provided banking regulatory advice.