Resources Financings Weigh Heavily on 2014 First Half League Tables

LONDON, September 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Project finance volumes have shown some volatility thanks to the absence of large oil and gas financings, but IJGlobal's data for the first half of 2014 show stability at the top of lending league tables.

This data appears in IJGlobal's 1H 2014 Global Infrastructure Review, which is available now at http://m.mail1.euromoneyplc.net/webApp/IJGlobalReview

At a time when institutional lenders are becoming more important in lending on smaller and medium-sized transport and social infrastructure projects, oil & gas and mining are becoming important to commercial banks maintaining their project finance franchises.

IJGlobal's database covers 190 project financings that closed in the first half of this year. It shows that projects with a total investment value of $99.86 billion closed with $88.25 billion in project finance debt in this period.

This volume represents a sharp fall on the same period in 2013, when just over $132 billion in financings closed for $160 billion in investment. A $60 billion fall in oil and gas investment volume accounts for all of this fall.

And one mining financing - the Roy Hill iron ore mine - determined which banks reached top positions in the rankings. This deal combined export credit agency lenders with commercial bank financing. But banks had to make such large debt commitments to the mine that it accounted for a large part of their budgets for the period.

The dominance of Japanese lenders of global project finance continues. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation takes over from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group at the top of the global ranking.

But Australian banks Commonwealth Bank of Australia (third), Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (fourth) and National Australia Bank (seventh) made a strong showing in the top ten, along with BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, ING, and Citi rounding out the group.

"Success in oil, gas, and mining lending is increasingly defining banks' franchise in project finance lending," says Tom Nelthorpe, executive editor, IJGlobal. "Even where banks have been successful in building up businesses arranging and advising on capital markets financing, their lending businesses will be dependent on extractive industries and the infrastructure that services them."

IJGlobal's database features over 9,500 projects, and 12,500 transactions, and is the most comprehensive in the energy, infrastructure and resources industry. IJGlobal is the new name for Project Finance and Infrastructure, which have been merged into one world-leading product since April 2014.

For more information, download IJGlobal's Project Finance Infrastructure Review 2014 H1 here: http://m.mail1.euromoneyplc.net/webApp/IJGlobalReview

For details contact:
Annika Kiestra
Senior Marketing Executive
+44(0)20-7827-6427
annika.kiestra@ijglobal.com