The Global Opportunity Project Finance Round Table
Gabriel Buck The connectivity in France between government,
banking and industry is very strong. That unified approach is incredibly powerful. Despite London’s banking strength, when a project happens the least likely entity to contact a bank is a UK contractor. The chances are that by the time we get approached by a UK consortium the rest of the world has already got there so most of the city of London is conflicted out. That connectivity needs to be looked at because in the UK there is a serious problem.
The panel focused attention on the key lessons from globally important projects that had been delivered over the years trying to identify what had enabled these projects to be financed and completed. Q: Are there any examples from around the world of political risk being well managed? What can be learned?
Manish Gupta Sadly no. The key political risk that investors are concerned about is the ability of governments to get projects over certain hurdles. In India for example you will always have a pipeline as long as your arm but the conversion to real projects is actually quite
Gabriel Buck
small. The reason is that politicians take the first step of announcing the project but not the next steps to take it over the hurdles of say, the regulatory system or the ability to grant permits quickly.
Andrew Ivison When we are asked to support bidders and we are
exposed for costs then if there is, say, a general election coming up in the country we will have to ask ourselves how much money
Philippe Gautier
do we all want to spend before we know the outcome and whether the project will survive.
Malcolm Bairstow Slippage, delays and indecision is a global problem
and it one of the biggest risks for consultants when you have someone assigned to a project that doesn’t go ahead. And counter to that, it is one of the reasons that Expos, World Cups and Olympics are such popular jobs. Once they are announced they have to ahead. If you distil the Armitt recommendations it is about just that - having a long term strategy, taking the short term politics out of the decision making and so providing a great deal more certainty. And that could equally apply anywhere around the world.
Peter Chamley I have my own little measure: the speed of getting things
done is inversely proportional to the number of layers of elected representatives. Look at Singapore, for example, where there is one, versus America where there are around ten. You cannot get away from politics when trying to get infrastructure built.
Q: Are there specific examples from project financing challenges from other countries that we can learn from?
Firms were not always aware that, for example, an airport was
going to be built in a particular city or country.’ Philippe Gautier, UKTI
global-opportunity.co.uk
Gabriel Buck Africa is a great example in terms of speed of
getting things done. But there are two political risks in my mind. One is about the speed of decision making - the gestation periods in the developed market are getting longer and in the developing market
ISSUE 01 | GLOBAL OPPORTUNITY 2014 37
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