The New York-based Project Finance team of Dexia Credit Local includes 19 professionals with diverse backgrounds in the Project Finance lending activity. The New York office has been involved in project financing since 1991 and today is one of the key operating teams for this important business line (New York, Paris and London are primary centers).

Project Finance in New York fully encompasses both the U.S. and South America. The team is active in providing senior debt to the electric power industry, oil, gas, transportation, ports, water and telecommunications. The New York team offers the full range of services to Dexia's clients. Such services include non-recourse lending, complex interest hedging, credit enhancement, advisory engagements, syndication and bank agent capabilities.

The bank's AA/Aa1/AA+ credit ratings, and Dexia Credit Local ownership of FSA (active link), a global financial guaranty insurer rated AAA, provides an excellent platform to serve clients where the credit quality of their financial partner is critical. Furthermore, our strategy is to develop strong client relationships for which we can provide significant underwriting capability in the most senior role in a transaction. We consider our competitive advantages to be:

• Ability to provide large underwritings: Dexia routinely acts as a Lead Arranger and Administrative Agent.
• Syndication view on market appetite: the project finance team is supported by a dedicated syndication function which focuses exclusively on the project finance bank market.
• Execution, syndication and transaction management abilities: a portfolio management team handles our Agent bank duties.