Year: 2022

Winner: Autopista Rio Magdalena 2

Rio Magdalena 2 is one of the biggest road financing deals that came to market in the past year
– and it’s also one of the most complex.
The 153-kilometer highway is being built by Aleatica, a Madrid-headquartered toll-road
specialist owned by IFM Global Infrastructure Fund, and marks the firm’s debut in Colombia’s
buzzing transportation infrastructure sector.
Rio Magdalena’s roughly $750 million financing package included a combination of inflationlinked bonds and loans, local currency and dollar-denominated loans plus interest rate and
currency hedges. It wins the award for Road Financing of the Year.
The financing structure for the 25-year concession was multi-faceted because of the
concession’s diverse sources of revenue: toll fees, payments from gasoline stations or billboard,
and transfers from government bodies such as the national infrastructure agency, ANI.
Revenue will be mainly in pesos but includes some dollar payments.
“The size of the project, the different financial topology, the origin of the funds both public and
from traffic and the currency meant we had to divide the financing into different phases, and a
local and international tranche to access the whole market,” says Aleatica’s CFO Gabriel
Nuñez.
The project attracted a diverse pool of financiers and coordinating with all of them together
with advisers and lawyers and across different time zones, was perhaps the biggest challenge,
he says.
Led by Goldman Sachs and Banco Santander, lending for the project came from institutions
ranging from Bancolombia, the country’s biggest bank, the national development fund FDN,
Spanish credit agency ICO, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., Crédit Agricole, Banco del
Crédito del Perú, Siemens Financial Services and the CAF-AM Ashmore infrastructure fund.
“It was our first project in Colombia and it is a new market that we consider strategic. We
couldn’t fail in the financing,” Nuñez says.
Additional complexity stemmed from Aleatica’s decision to divide the highway into several
sections and use outside EPC contractors for each one.
The contract is to repair, build, improve and operate the toll road corridor connecting Medellin
with Santander, and provide better connections between Bogota to the south and the Caribbean
coast to the north.

Nuñez says the success of the company’s local bond market debut paves the way for a
successful refinancing arrangement for the project in the future, and others that will hopefully
follow

SPONSOR:
Aleatica (IFM GIF Portfolio Company)


SUPPORTING INSTITUTIONS:
Lenders and Financial Advisors:
Banco Santander SA
Goldman Sachs
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank
Instituto de Crédito Oficial
Banco de Crédito del Perú
Siemens Financial Services, Inc
Bancolombia
Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional (FDN)
Ashmore CAF
Advisors:
Steer Davies Gleave
ARUP
SRR Consultores (Aon)
Baker McKenzie
Sullivan & Cromwell
Vinson & Elkins
Clifford Chance
Gómez-Pinzón
Agents: CitiTrust Colombia, Citibank N.A.
Trustee: Fiduciaria Bancolombia

All supporting financial institutions and law firms were transmitted to LatinFinance by the
award category winners. For updates please email awards@latinfinance.com