Garrigues wins Latin Lawyer’s Deal of the Year for the Bogotá metro project
Jaime Iglesias (partner) with the award.
Garrigues took the award for Latin American Deal of the Year in the banking and finance category for its advice to Metro de Bogotá and Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional on the financing of the largest urban transport project in Colombia. The awards are presented annually in São Paulo by Latin Lawyer, one of the most prestigious publications in the sector, and bring together the main firms and companies in the region. The award is particularly significant as it evidences the cooperation between offices and the integration of our teams, wherever the work may be required, and are a good example of how to harness, to the benefit of the client, the local and international experience of our professionals on major infrastructure projects.
The work included legal support on the structuring of the finance and the negotiation of the contracts with international lenders. The project requires up to USD$1.6 billion in loans from multilateral banks, to be supplied by the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank. The Garrigues team advised on the negotiation of the loan agreements with multilateral banks and the grant of security by the Republic of Colombia.
The financing of the project for the first line of the Bogotá metro system will entail multi-source financing, involving additional financing components.
For nearly two years, the Bogotá office, with support from the Public Law practice in Spain and other Latin American offices, has led the legal structuring of the first line of the Bogotá metro system, on which we also worked with Colombian firm Durán & Osorio. The line will have an estimated length of 23 kilometers and will carry over one million passengers.