There is a big concern in British Columbia, Canada as the Port Mann Bridge is having so much trouble closing the financing. This week a new schedule has been set for the close, there is a new deadline in February.The preferred bidder consortium chosen for the Port Mann Bridge project is composed of:Macquarie Infrastructure Group (MIG)Flatiron Construction CorporationPeter Kiewit Sons CorporationLast week a group of anti-Gateway demonstrators protested last Thursday at the downtown Vancouver offices of infrastructure firm Macquarie, which is part of the development group bidding on the Port Mann twinning project.Macquarie is one of the biggest toll road operators in the world, it operates several major tolled highways in the US (the Indiana Toll road, the Chicago Skyway, the South Bay Expressway in San Diego and the Dulles Greenway in Virginia) and the most profitable one for a private operator in the world, the 407 ETR in Toronto.Well, this should be enough to convince lenders bank that they know how to operate a highway but the credit crunch is affecting all the current financing deals in the market. The official reason for the delay in financing for the Port Mann project was credit constraints, but Project Finance magazine reported that "market rumours" suggest some banks were uncomfortable with "the debt's pricing structure," meaning they could be looking to renegotiate the terms.I guess it is not easy to get a $2.3-billion bank loan in place on time, and it is much harder now that the credit crunch is making the banks to follow long due dilligence processes that in some cases may affect the viability of the project.That quantity makes it one of the deals of the year, what other highways project finance cases reach such a quantity?Cintra, the spanish toll road operator said last week that its 90 percent-owned consortium has won a highway contract in Poland for a total investment of 2.1 billion euros ($2.72 billion). Cintra has been give a whole year to reach the financial close.I can not think of any other, you may help me with this, do you know any other? It is going to be of high interest how Cintra get financing for such a big project in Poland sharing so much risk. They may find some help from the European Investment Bank (EIB) that is being very active in the last months but even with that, it should be very complicated.Anyways, let's see how everything progresses, some people think that public private partnerships are ideal for this kind of enormous projects, I agree with that, but how much of the risk should be carried by the private developer and how much by lender banks? Banks don't want to share any risk and they are also making money out of it, that's not fair.Update:Canada and UK: PPP/PFI projects reach financial close

  

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