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 & Company 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. Sandy Sheinin and Shane Onufrechuk of Sheinin & Company provided tax and structuring advice.

Representing Alberta Infrastructure and Transportation were Peter Thagard, Mark Enright, Lonnie Stewardson and Andrée Blais.

Counsel to the lenders were Chris Bennett, Peter Willis, Catherine Doyle, Jason MacIntyre, Rob Scavone and Shahen Mirakian of McMillan Binch Mendelsohn LLP. Bryan Maruyama and Jim Neilson of Parlee McLaws LLP acted as local counsel to the lenders in Alberta. David Slade of Allen & Overy LLP was New York counsel to the lenders.

Torys LLP was counsel to the monoline provider with a team in New York of Andrew Schifrin, Darien Leung and Alicia Gimenez (financing); and in Toronto, Jonathan Weisz, Christopher Fowles, Bela Halasz and Milosz Zemanek (financing), Blair Keefe (regulatory) and John Tobin(tax) as well as Bill Winters, Grant Vogeli, Michel Bourque and Jennifer Varzari of Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer LLP.

Stoney Trail Constructors were represented by Douglas Sanders of the Vancouver office, and Chris Hustwick of the Calgary office, of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP. Del Lewis of Edmonton firm of Henning Byrne represented Carmacks Maintenance Services Ltd.