In spite of the adverse economical climate there have been four financial close in the last days. It is fair to say that governments played an important role in all this but PPP projects have showed that they still can go ahead.We could make two distinct divisions of the projects that achieved financial close. One would be:Transportation projects: M25 highway and Port Mann BridgeSocial/Health projects: Royal Victoria Hospital and Manchester BSF project.The other one would be:Canadian projects: Royal Victoria Hospital and Port Mann BridgeBritish projects:M25 highway and Manchester BSF projectWhy do I write this? Well, it's not the same financing highway projects as financing social/health (let me treat them as a group) projects because the amount of money that these deals comprises are quite different. It is also different the kind of risks that corporations financing these projects deal with.On the other hand we could divide these projects by country. Canada and the UK both have governments that have bet for the implication of the private sector to develop infrastructure. In fact, both governments have stepped up to co-finance the M25 highway project in the UK and the Port Mann Bridge project in Canada. The UK is a pioneer in Project Finance Initiatives or Public private partnerships and Canada is currently one of the most active countries in these kind of deals.Canada is specializing in funding hospital constructions and extensions under public-private partnerships. If you go to the Canadian Council for Public Private Partnerships's website you can see the PPP PROJECT TRACKER (this is a very cool tool), there all the hospitals developed under this method appear.The Royal Victoria Hospital expansion was awarded on Feb. 6 to a Vanbots-Carillion consortium, remember that Carillion acquired Vanbots last year to enter in the canadian PPP market. It is said that the team financing has been arranged by Banco Espirito Santo de Investimento SA; National Australia Bank Limited; Norddeutsche Landesbank Gironzentrale; Bank of Montreal; CIT Financial Ltd.; National Bank of Canada Inc.; and Toronto Dominion Bank. Total debt for the project is around C$250m.In August, British Columbia,Canada, selected the Connect BC Development Group, comprised of Macquarie,Transtoll, Kiewit and Flatiron, to develop the Port Mann/ Highway 1 project. The consortium won the project beating offers from a Bilfinger Berger/ Transurban team and a Cintra/ Skanska team.The Macquarie-led consortium will contribute about C$1bn in equity with BC providing a C$1.15bn loan to be matched by C$1.15bn in bank financing. BC agreed to fund Port Mann after the consortium experienced difficulties in finding funding as bookrunners on the debt package were struggling with syndication. As I wrote above, these are large projects involving large amounts of money and in the current environment administrations have to help corporations to arrange financing.BNP Paribas, Caja Madrid, RBS and SG are acting as MLAs and bookrunners on the deal. The lenders are meeting the government to discuss final details of the credit but the fnancial close seems to be really close too.Moving to the UK, a Carillion joint venture has reached financial close on a £300m Building Schools for the Future (BSF) project in Manchester. We can see how Carillion is a top PPP/PFI developer that is closing financing for its projects in the most adverse climate. The Carillion joint venture will deliver 12 secondary and special schools, at a capital cost of £173 million. The private finance element of the project is being funded by the usual combination of borrowing and equity, with Barclays providing some £50 million of debt finance and the consortium members (Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, Building Schools for the Future Investments Limited and Carillion) contributing approximately £4.2 million of equity, of which Carillion will provide £3.4 million and the other two members £0.4 million each.And once more in the UK, and these deal is not close either, the M25 highway. The Connect Plus consortium of Balfour Beatty Capital Projects, Skanska Infrastructure Development, Atkins and Egis Projects was awarded preferred bidder status for the DBFO project in July. The government may have to cough up £400m of the £1.25bn debt needed to get the M25 motorway widening project. The vast scale of the M25's financial call - involving 17 different banks each loaning around £50m - means that the entire project could stall if several banks walk away. But again, the british government had to step up to help the consortium. It is said the European Investment Bank (EIB) is also contributing in this financing.This is a large project but they are also big experienced firms trying to put everything together. It's noteworthy that banks seem not to want to lend more than $1 billion (nor for Port Mann neither for the M25). Governments have to arrange the rest, but this will change, if deals can be closed at this time, better future times will come and much will be learnt from all this.