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Breakneck builder

01 September 2007

ICA has capped financial recovery with a slew of Mexican road concessions, including FARAC. But its new deals will test bank appetite, and ICA's shareholders, to the limit. Catherine McGuirk talks capacity and creativity with Gabriel de la Concha, director of investment and financing at ICA.

Read more: [ICA] [project] [finance] [farac]

ICA is Mexico's largest construction, engineering and operating company. It is about to take on the first of the FARAC roads concessions, in a consortium with Goldman Sachs. The $4 billion deal is the largest ever Peso loan to a private borrower in the country's history.

The win followed a strong showing in winning greenfield toll road concessions from the Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SCT), the country's transport ministry. These are halcyon days for a firm that, after successes in the eighties and early nineties, was almost crippled by the Tequila Crisis of 1994. In a neat bit of symmetry, ICA's latest success involves taking over some roads that it was forced to give up during that crisis.

The Ps44.052 billion ($4.02 billion) FARAC acquisition, for four of the country's major toll roads, is the first move by the SCT to return these assets to a private operator. The...


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