Akin Gump innovates: An attorney’s groundbreaking work builds investor confidence in an under-developed market
Dino Barajas turned around a country’s international financing profile through his creative approach to, and leadership in, what is recognized as one of the most challenging and structurally complex transactions in Central America. Financial Times recognized his creativity on our client’s behalf by naming him to its 2010 list of the top 10 US Innovative Lawyers.
Mr. Barajas led the Akin Gump team that represented Polaris Energy Nicaragua, S.A. (PENSA) as project counsel in PENSA’s development and financing of the San Jacinto-Tizate Geothermal Power Project, the largest geothermal power plant in Nicaragua’s history. The $160 million Phase II project financing is Nicaragua’s largest project financing to date. When combined with the Phase I financing (also closed by the Akin Gump team), it represents an overall project financing of nearly a quarter-billion U.S. dollars.
Given the lack of recent project financing history in the Nicaraguan market, the deal team had to innovate financing structures, including a “chain” of interlocking loan guarantees, to accommodate the requirements of the development bank lenders. The successful closing of the financing has been a game changer for Nicaragua and the region, leading to new interest in financing large-scale infrastructure projects in Nicaragua at an unprecedented level.
As the Financial Times noted in recognizing what it termed his “groundbreaking work” in Nicaragua, “Mr Barajas has contributed to the rise of a new confidence in Nicaragua as a legitimate destination for finance, with the second phase of the geothermal project already heavily oversubscribed.”
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