NAIA 3 project wins four awards

Fraport AG/Philippine International Air Terminal Co. (PIATCO), builders and operators of the new terminal, bagged four Deal of the Year awards from International Finance Research Asia for Philippine Loan Deal of the Year, Finance Asia for Project Finance Deal of the Year, Project Finance International for Asian Infrastructure Deal of the Year, and from AsiaMoney for the Asian Project Finance Deal of the Year.

Against an ardous market environment (including instability of the Government in the first quarter of the year, the hostage crisis, the Argentina financial crisis, and the Sept. 11 attack), the NAIA IPT 3 Project managed to achieve a number of financing benchmarks.

First, the financing can be considered a true underwriting in the sense that the coordinating lead arrangers and lead arrangers signed the document ahead of the general syndication.

Second, the financing was completed within a short period of time frame relative to comparable transactions, and the coordinating lead arrangers and common lenders’ counsel (Sherman and Sterling) were only appointed in late Feb. 2001 and the financing agreements were signed in July 2001.

And thirdly, as one of the largest loan facilities to be syndicated in the Philippines and achieving a 15-year maturity for the International Financing Corp. and Asian Development Bank loans, and up to 17-years for the Kredinstalt fur Wiederaufbau-facility, which is longer than any other Export Credit Agency covered facilities within the region since the Asian financial crisis.

Fraport AG acted as financial adviser to PIATCO and was supported in this task by Dresdner Kleinworth Wasserstein (DrKW) who acted as Fraport’s adviser as well as the coordinating lead arranger of the $440 million of project finance debt facilities, as well as the sole syndication agent, documentation and modeling bank.

The eyes of the international finance community as well foreign investors are trained on the completion of the NAIA IPT 3 Project. The opening of the new terminal this December 2002 makes it an important milestone of BOT projects. IPT 3 will be a showcase for infrastructure projects and communicate the positive investment climate in the country.