The deal was signed on 16 July and is worth US$94 million. Chadbourne & Parke LLP in Washington, DC and New York and FERRERE in Montevideo counselled DNB and Intesa Sanpaolo as lenders. US firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman advised Deutsche Bank as collateral agent, but counsel details could not be confirmed prior to publication.
The transaction will provide short-term financing for the Jacinta plant, a 50-megawatt solar project to be built in Salto, Uruguay by FRV. DNB, Norway’s largest bank, along with Italy’s Intesa provided financing worth US$70 million, while CRG Capital, a subsidiary of Banco Santander, provided US$24 million in the form of debt-for-equity.
Raquel Bierzwinsky, counsel at Chadbourne & Parke LLP, says CRG entered the deal a few months after the banks had already received preliminary credit approval. According to Bierzwinsky, this changed the deal’s structure significantly, as the initial lenders had to be comfortable with the possibility, however slight, that Santander could sponsor the project if FRV was unable to repay its debt-for-equity tranche.