Milbank Represents IDB in Landmark Financing for Two Major Sugar/Ethanol Plants in Brazil
NEW YORK, February 20, 2009 – In the largest loan ever by a multilateral institution for a green fuel project in Latin America, Brazil's Companhia Nacional de Açúcar e Álcool (CNAA) has closed a $153 million project financing with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for two sugar/ethanol plants in Brazil. CNAA's shareholders include funds affiliated with Riverstone Holdings LLC, Brazilian sugar producer Santelisa Vale, the trading company Global Foods and other investors. The international law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, led by partner Dan Bartfeld, represented IDB in structuring, negotiating and closing the financing.
"This is the largest and most significant cross-border green fuel financing ever undertaken in Latin America, and the fact that it was able to achieve funding in the midst of the credit crisis is a real tribute to the strength of the project," noted Milbank's Bartfeld.
In addition to Mr. Bartfeld, the Milbank team included associates Sarah Glenn, Rebecca Campbell, Alfred Wang, Caroline Conway and Martine Arbuthnott. Mr. Bartfeld has led the Milbank team on many of Latin America's largest cross-border energy transactions in the last decade.
About the Transaction
CNAA has a portfolio consisting of three sugar-based plants: Campina Verde and Ituiutaba, located in Minas Gerais, and Itumbiara, in Goias. The IDB financing will be used to fund project costs at the Itumbiara and Ituiutaba facilities, which are expected to begin full commercial operation in Q2 2009. Each project will be a fully integrated facility with an annual crushing capacity of 2.7 million tons of sugarcane, sugarcane fields comprising more than 33,000 hectares and a 56-MW biomass co-generation plant that will supply energy to the plant and sell the excess energy to the Brazil electricity grid. Total project costs for the three projects is approximately $1 billion.
About Milbank
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP is a pre-eminent global law firm that for more than 140 years has provided innovative legal solutions in many of the world’s largest, most complex, “first-ever” corporate transactions and litigation. Our transactional expertise includes capital markets, corporate finance, project finance, acquisition finance and other major fields of law practice. Milbank litigation teams resolve disputes involving mergers and acquisitions, proxy battles, financings and securities offerings, intellectual property, white collar crime and corporate restructurings, among others. Our clients range from prominent multinational financial, industrial and commercial enterprises to governments, institutions and individuals. The Firm is headquartered in New York with offices in Beijing, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Munich, Singapore, Tokyo and Washington, DC.