Washington, DC, July 19, 2010
—IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have jointly raised €200 million from a group of eight commercial banks for the reconstruction and expansion of St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport.
Ritva Laukkanen, IFC Director of Syndicated Loans and Management, said, “We are very satisfied with the results of the syndication for the renovation of Pulkovo airport. This is Russia’s first public-private partnership project financed with private money, and its success is a sign of the growing interest of international investors in helping develop the country’s infrastructure.”
“This is the first Russian public-private partnership transaction financed by commercial lenders, and the fact that this benchmark transaction for a landmark Russian infrastructure project was heavily over-subscribed sends a positive signal about the market’s potential appetite for such deals”, said Lorenz Jorgensen, EBRD Director of Syndications.
The syndication brings the overall amount raised by IFC and the EBRD for the Pulkovo project to €370 million. Both institutions remain the lenders of record for the full amount under an A-/B-loan structure. The maturity of the syndicated loans is 12 years.
On April 28, 2010, IFC committed a €70 million loan for its own account in the project, while the EBRD committed €100 million for its own account. The maturity of both loans is 15 years. The IFC-EBRD funding is part of a long-term debt package of about €716 million put together by five international financial institutions and Russia’s Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs Vnesheconombank to finance the building of a new terminal at Pulkovo.
The Pulkovo airport project is the first public-private partnership transaction for Russia’s transportation sector designed in accordance with international standards.
The commercial banks participating in the €200 million B-loan are: UniCredit (€55 million) , Standard Bank (€39 million), Espirito Santo Investment (€23 million), Nordea Bank (€23 million) as Bookrunners and Mandated Lead Arrangers; and DZ BANK AG (€17 million), KfW IPEX-Bank (€16 million), MEDIOBANCA - Banca di Credito Finanziario S.p.A. (€13.5 million), and Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG (€13.5 million) as Mandated Lead Arrangers.
About IFC
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, creates opportunity for people to escape poverty and improve their lives. We foster sustainable economic growth in developing countries by supporting private sector development, mobilizing capital for private enterprise, and providing advisory and risk mitigation services to businesses and governments. Our new investments totaled $14.5 billion in fiscal 2009, helping channel capital into developing countries during the financial crisis. For more information, visit
www.ifc.org
For more information about EBRD, please visit
www.ebrd.com
.
