Stoney Trail Group Completes $650M Financing of Calgary Ring Road

Alberta Infrastructure and Transportation and Bilfinger Berger BOT GmbH successfully completed the commercial and financial close of the Northeast Stoney Trail Project (also known as the northeast segment of Calgary's Ring Road Project) on February 16, 2007.

The $650 million project involves the design, construction, financing and operation by Stoney Trail General Partnership (a Canadian special purpose vehicle created by Bilfinger Berger BOT Inc., a Canadian subsidiary of Bilfinger Berger BOT GmbH) of the northeast portion of the Stoney Trail in Calgary. CIT Group Securities (Canada) was financial advisor to the Stoney Trail Group.

The transaction represents the first time a Canadian domestic project finance loan has been wrapped by a monoline. The lenders, Dexia Crédit Local S.A. and Fortis Capital Corp., provided a $130 million loan governed by Ontario law, which benefited from a “wrap” of principal and interest, swap payments and a debt service reserve surety bond from Financial Guaranty Insurance Company in New York.

The design-builder for the project is Stoney Trail constructors, a joint venture between Flatiron Constructors Canada Limited, Parsons Overseas Company of Canada Ltd. and Graham Construction and Engineering Inc. The operator is Carmacks Maintenance Services Ltd.

Representing Stoney Trail General Partnership and Bilfinger Berger BOT Inc. were the Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver offices of Davis LLP, including Ian Bendell, Tobor Emakpor, Mitchell Mostyn and Andrew Burton of the Toronto office, David Stratton and Rachel Hamilton of the Edmonton office and Douglas Buchanan, Linda Parsons, Yukiko Kojima and Kate Bake-Paterson of the Vancouver office. Shane Onufrechuk provided tax and structuring advice.