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01 September 2008

Canada's market has attracted a broad spread of developer support, but sponsors are bearing the brunt of poor credit market conditions. Can the wealth of opportunities make up for altered risk-return profiles? Catherine McGuirk reports.

The pipeline of deals in the Canadian infrastructure market is continuing to flow steadily. It flourishes despite continued difficulties in debt markets and constraints in construction capacity. Sponsors are finding ways to compete for projects in the face of market pressure but, in some cases, to the detriment of their own risk profiles.

The scope of Canada's provincial PPP and infrastructure programmes has expanded into new types of projects and financings for assets in other sectors. The past months have also witnessed new project sponsors bidding on projects, and in some cases being successful. HSBC's infrastructure fund, Bouygues, Innisfree and Acciona are a number of the new entrants to the market, and more, such as OHL and Brisa, are submitting bids.

Simon Chapman, senior vice-president of infrastructure development at Carillion in Canada, says that the company estimates that there is around C$8 billion ($7.6 billion) to C$10 billion in deals...


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