Legal structure of project entity
Samalayuca II was structured as a BLT project because, until December 1992, build-ownoperate (BOO) projects were not permitted under Mexican law. The project’s BLT structure accommodates a construction period, similar to most project financings, and a 20-year lease period that is comparable to a highly structured, on-balance-sheet corporate financing rather than a project financing. The CFE has an unconditional obligation to make lease payments, whether or not the plant is operating. At the end of the lease period the ownership of the project is transferred to the Mexican utility. A Mexican business trust is the owner of the plant, the lessor of the plant to the CFE and the obligor of the project debt. The project structure is illustrated in Exhibit 7.1.
All the financing documents involving the trust, the commercial banks, US Eximbank and the IDB are in English, and were negotiated in New York. On the other hand, the lease, the trust and annexes to the trust are governed by Mexican law. The CFE would not accept having them governed under New York law. Negotiations to create these documents were conducted in Spanish at the CFE’s offices in Mexico City. Although there have been English translations, the original enforceable versions of lease and trust documents are in Spanish. This presented problems, because a number of legal terms in the Spanish-language documents are less than exact translations of English-language terms that exist in the context of English and US law, but that do not exist in Spanish or in Mexican law. An example concerns the English adjective ‘material’: the Spanish words importante and substantiale do not have the same meaning in the context of Mexican law.