Narrative
Full Description
Project narrative
On September 10, 2019, the State of Western Australia signed a $1.41 billion AUD agreement with Land Services WA (LSWA) to partially privatize its land title services and data agency, Landgate. LSWA is a special purpose vehicle consortium between Macquarie Infrastructure & Real Assets Inc. (MIRA), Sunsuper Superannuation Fund, and Health Employees Superannuation Trust Australia (HESTA) created to manage the delivery, upgrade, and maintenance of Landgate's automated titling services for a 40-year lease period, including processing property transactions and searches of the title register. To support the financing and corporate aspects of this partial privatization and acquisition of Landgate, a syndicate of 10 banks — including Bank of China (BOC), Bank of Communications, China Construction Bank Corporation (CCB), the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) — entered into an approximately $700 million AUD syndicated loan agreement to Land Services WA. In addition to these Chinese state-owned banks, the following banks contributed to this syndicated loan: ANZ Bank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, ING Bank N.V., National Australia Bank Limited (NAB), Société Générale (SocGen), and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC). ANZ Bank, NAB, ICBC, SocGen, and SMBC were reportedly the main contributors to this loan. Besides the debt, the acquisition was financed by equity via the project sponsors: MIRA contributed approximately 55% of the equity, SunSuper contributed 30%, and HESTA contributed 15%. MIRA also had an undisclosed investor in the project via a separately managed account. Record ID#93161 captures BOC's contribution. Record ID#93164 captures Bank of Communications' contribution. Record ID#93165 captures CCB's contribution. Record ID#93166 captures ICBC's contribution. LSWA made the $1.41 billion AUD payment on October 22, 2019, and the partial commercialization of Landgate commenced the same date.
Staff comments
1. "Funding details revealed for Western Australian land registry deal", which states that the approximate value of this debt was $700 million AUD, was published before financial closure of the deal. It is possible that the debt amount and lenders shifted during financial close. For now, in absence of further information, AidData has used this figure to code the project details. This issue merits further investigation. 2. The individual contribution of the 10 lenders to this $700 million AUD syndicated loan is unknown. Per "Funding details revealed for Western Australian land registry deal", it is known, that ANZ Bank, NAB, ICBC, SocGen, and SMBC were the main contributors to this loan, however their contributions are unknown. For the time being, AidData has estimated the contribution of Bank of Communications by assuming that each lender contributed an equal amount ($70,000,000 AUD) to the syndicated loan. 3. "Funding details revealed for Western Australian land registry deal", published on September 11, 2019, states that financial close on the deal was expected in occur in the fourth quarter of 2019. The specific date the loan was committed is unknown. However, its presence in "Clifford Chance - Australia", a list of deals advised by Clifford Chance, confirms that the loan was successfully issued. For now, in the absence of the specific date, AidData has coded the signing of the purchase agreement between the consortium and Western Australia as September 10, 2019, and has marked the commitment_date_estimated? field as True.