Mayer Brown steers $13bn US toll road bid
Mayer Brown and Debevoise & Plimpton have bagged lead roles on the $12.8bn (£6.58bn) privatisation of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, one of the busiest toll roads in the US, writes The American Lawyer. Mayer Brown acted alongside Philadelphia firm Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll for the state of Pennsylvania, while Debevoise advised the top bidder, a consortium comprising Spanish toll operator Abertis Infraestructuras, Barcelona-based investment firm and Abertis shareholder Criteria CaixaCorp and Citigroup's Citi Infrastructure Investors.
May 20, 2008 at 05:51 AM
3 minute read
Mayer Brown and Debevoise & Plimpton have bagged lead roles on the $12.8bn (£6.58bn) privatisation of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, one of the busiest toll roads in the US, writes The American Lawyer.
Mayer Brown acted alongside Philadelphia firm Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll for the state of Pennsylvania, while Debevoise advised the top bidder, a consortium comprising Spanish toll operator Abertis Infraestructuras, Barcelona-based investment firm and Abertis shareholder Criteria CaixaCorp and Citigroup's Citi Infrastructure Investors.
The Mayer Brown team included M&A partner John Schmidt, finance partner David Narefsky, regulatory partner Joseph Seliga and tax partner Robert Kelman. The Chiacgo-based firm was retained by the state because of its past privatisation work on the Indiana Toll Road and Chicago Skyway.
Leading for Ballard Spahr were finance partners Brian Walsh, Adrian King, Jennifer Miller and Randall Towers, tax partner Frederic Ballard and litigation partner John Grugan, who co-heads the firm's corporate compliance and investigations group.
Project finance co-chair Ivan Mattei, who has previously advised clients on financings for toll roads in Chile and Mexico, led the team for Debevoise, alongside projects partner Craig Bowman and tax chair Burt Rosen.
Governor Edward Rendell – a former Ballard Spahr partner – announced the winning bid yesterday (19 May), which hands the Abertis-Criteria-Citi consortium a 75-year lease for the Turnpike.
Rendell said in a statement: "We urgently need new funding for road and bridge repair, and a turnpike lease will help us meet that need. Under the terms and conditions we set, the turnpike will be upgraded and tolls will be no higher than the Turnpike Commission will charge."
Barbara Adams, general counsel of Pennsylvania, and Robert Shea, assistant chief counsel for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, headed up the in-state legal transaction team.
The Abertis-Citigroup offer received a boost over the weekend after a rival bid by Australia's Macquarie Infrastructure Group and its Spanish partner, Madrid-based Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, was withdrawn due to financing problems. The Macquarie-Cintra consortium successfully bid $5.6bn (£2.88bn) in 2005 for a 75-year lease for the Indiana Toll Road and the Chicago Skyway, when White & Case advised Macquarie and Cintra.
Goldman Sachs, the Toronto-based Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and the Melbourne-based Transurban Group, Australia's largest toll road operator, put in a second-place bid of $12.1bn (£6.22bn) for the Turnpike.
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