Legal issues
The CFE’s original bid specifications included a model lease agreement that was about three pages long. Brandon A. Blaylock, Managing Director, International Business and Venture Development, GE Capital Services Structured Finance Group, noted at the time that even a normal car lease in the United States is longer. The sponsors and their lawyers had to negotiate a more detailed comprehensive agreement.
The principal problem that the sponsors faced was a provision in Mexican law that a lessee that suffers force majeure can abrogate a lease. For example, if half of an apartment is destroyed by fire, the lessee has a right to reduce the rent paid by one half. If the problem is not corrected within a reasonable time, the lessee has the right to terminate the lease. This right cannot be waived by a lessee. It applies to all types of leases, from apartments to power plants. A lease that gave the CFE a right to terminate in the event of a problem could not have been financed. Financial leases generally have ‘hell or high water’ payment provisions. The challenge for the sponsors was to arrange a BLT project structure that would satisfy Mexican law but could also be financed.
Negotiations had a couple of false starts. One structure developed in detail, with some precedent in Mexico, was called a split lease. Some of the assets, principally movable assets, would have been leased under New York law, which does not allow the lessee to abrogate the lease because of force majeure. Other immovable assets would have been leased under Mexican law. The Mexican authorities rejected this structure in early 1994 because of its complexity, sending the sponsors and their lawyers back to the drawing board. The sponsors’ principal Mexican law firm, Ritch, Heather y Mueller, and the CFE’s lawyer developed the concept of a Mexican business trust combined with a lease. Obligations under trust agreements can be made ‘come hell or high water’ and these obligations cannot be abrogated because of force majeure as they can under leases. If the lessee were subject to
force majeure, the value due under the trust would turn out to be equal to the remaining lease payments. This was the fundamental legal cornerstone that allowed the project to be financed.
The trust structure also provided benefits to the CFE, such as the right to interact with the developers in the construction process, seeing drawings, approving designs and inspecting progress. (The original bid specifications would have handicapped the CFE, the user of the plant, by not providing for it to interact with the developers.) As a result, lawyers for both sides believed that there was a sufficient two-way flow of benefits and consideration to make the agreement enforceable.
An unusual aspect of the trust structure, as applied to a project financing, is that the CFE
contracted with the owner, which in turn contracted with the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor. The obligations that the owner undertook in favour of the CFE in many respects had to be identical to obligations undertaken by the EPC contractor in favour of the owner.
The CFE is a party to the trust as well as to the lease agreement. It is the third beneficiary of the trust, the first being the senior lenders and the second being the equity holders. As a result, when the transfer of the trust’s assets, the power plant, is made at the end of the lease period, the CFE will have third priority in receiving the assets.