More than eleven months after Inauguration Day, the Biden Administration has not placed any confirmed appointees to the board of the Export-Import Bank (“EXIM”). Such is EXIM’s melodrama. A distinct departure from administrations pre-2010 for an agency that has long served bipartisan interests, but sadly very much in line with recent EXIM’s history and the abject political fiction now on display in Washington.
EXIM’s current challenge comes from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who has fabricated the most unlikely to controversies to place a hold on Chair nominee Reta Jo Lewis of Georgia because of her status as a Strategic Advisor to the U.S.-China Heartland Association, a distinctly moderate trade group with a focus on – as the name suggests – the U.S. Heartland. . . . A disregard for facts is not surprising from a senator who once tweeted a photo of Rep. Elijah Cummings in tribute of Rep. John Lewis.
Read MoreDieting is like project finance. For nerds like me and some of my lawyer friends, project finance can be fun, just like how the dieticians I know really geek out about dieting. But dieting is no fun for the rest of us and project finance is not fun for those who have to spend the time, energy, and money to structure and submit project finance applications to lenders only to engage with those same lenders in what seems like an endless due diligence and negotiation process. No one would ever diet for the fun of it and no one who could get a loan another way should ever choose project finance.
I’m sure many are skeptical of this analogy already and the rest are sure that the similarities end there. They don’t.
Read MoreOnly a film-obsessed advisor, with close ties to EXIM and a penchant for making off-beat connections to finance topics would ever make this association, but the various meanings of the title phrase “As Good As It Gets” do convey useful insights about the reauthorization and future of the U.S. export credit agency (“ECA”), whose resurrection from political limbo gives EXIM renewed life.
Read MoreEXIM’s long hiatus was a grave loss for the bank’s leadership and staff, who believed deeply in EXIM’s mission.
Recovering from loss is always possible, but when the loss is deep and personal, full recovery is difficult. . . Thus, apt metaphors for EXIM’s road to recovery may be found in the language of better-known personal recovery processes typically associated with substance abuse, severe physical trauma, and emotional illness - and in the well-known story of Jonah and the Whale.
Read MoreIn advance of the upcoming TXF Americas Conference in Miami, for which JLS Capital is proud to be a sponsor, this edition of our newsletter focuses on energy investment in Latin America-- a story of increasing opportunity and persisting risks.
Higher oil prices are improving the environment for oil and gas investment, though price volatility remains an inherent risk. As in the past, prices for commodities gold, copper, and other commodities have tended to rise with oil prices, fueling a resurgence of mining investment in the region. However, investment in these broader sectors may be hampered by political forces, largely stemming from upcoming general elections in several key markets.
Read More2017 BRIEF
For our final newsletter of 2017, JLS Capital would like to highlight a few of the year’s prominent energy sector trends that have affected the project finance industry. Through Q3 2017, global project finance investment volume totaled approximately $184 billion, with nearly two-thirds of this activity concentrated in Europe and North America (See Exhibit 1). This activity represents a decrease of 15% compared to the first three quarters of 2016.
For many of us, the Thanksgiving and upcoming winter holiday break mean the return of children from college and – at our house - opportunities for greatly appreciated parental guidance on the value of the liberal arts educations children are receiving. Actually, guidance may be less than fully appreciated. To those who are steeped in coursework on literature, philosophy, history, language, quantitative reasoning, and other enjoyable but seemingly impractical pursuits, it all seems quite theoretical — just another set of parental lessons to be filed away.
Read MoreI have been struck recently by a large number of stalled projects. You see them – literally – driving along the road in certain parts of Africa and Asia. They are evident in available statistics and from the number of parties calling for help. The trend isn’t surprising, given chronically low oil and commodity prices, which have just dropped again. What is noteworthy is how developers and lenders respond: Things have gone wrong. Various problems have emerged such as loan defaults, project degradation, and permit lapses. Yet, project parties want to continue as they were.
Read MoreExperience is the hardest teacher because it gives its tests first and its lessons afterwards. After the big test in late March on how to pass complicated health care reform, the lesson has clearly been that the business promotion and poker playing techniques many associate with deal making are not useful in the legislative process. Instead, let’s add legislation to the realms where project finance style negotiations would be more effective.
Read MoreExport-Import Bank employees and supporters had a real roller coaster ride last week. Following a February 9, 2019 announcement by Senator Heitkamp of North Dakota, that President Trump, had agreed to restore full lending powers to the Export-Import Bank, there was speculation that President Trump would use his February 17 speech to Boeing workers at its South Carolina plant to announce a new board member and a return to business for Ex-Im Bank. His speech even noted that U.S. exporters would soon again be on a “level playing field” with foreign competitors, borrowing a key phrase from Ex-Im Bank’s mission statement.
Read MoreMost of us are just now completing the first few weeks back from winter break, which is often a time of rest and even reflection, but rarely a time for learning new skills. At my house it is. Over most of summer and winter breaks, and despite the best of their intentions, my daughters have received negotiation training and acquired what I consider to be valuable skills.
Read MoreA sad saga continues for a true U.S. success story as the U.S. Export Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) remains under a dark cloud. In June of last year, Ex-Im Bank’s authorization lapsed. It was reauthorized five months later, but more than another year has passed without the bank being able to authorize deals over $10 million, as the Senate has not confirmed new Board members, denying the bank a quorum it needs.
Read MoreEven 50 years into the women’s liberation movement and even with increasing numbers of women at the negotiating table, women are under-represented at senior levels of finance companies, and views about how to conduct finance and business negotiations remain decidedly male-dominated.
When I first started at the US Export-Import Bank, my wife would ask me regularly whether I had “kicked banker butt.”
Donald Trump’s high-handed The Art of the Deal approach continues to typify conventional wisdom about deal making. To succeed, women need to be as or more aggressive than men to be taken seriously. In an upcoming film at the Sundance Festival, the film Equity about female investment bankers is being heralded as “the first female-driven Wall Street film.” The female lead characters are tough, aggressive and even ruthless.
Read MoreAgency lenders do not get the respect they deserve from a market too quick to point to their deficiencies. Hence I give you Side 2 of this two part series on agency lenders – The Trouble with Agencies – a title inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock film The Trouble with Harry. The film uses the focal point of Harry, who in typical Hitchcock fashion is dead, but it’s not a murder mystery. Rather, Harry’s corpse is a plot device used to motivate a love story between Shirley MacLaine’s and John Forsythe’s characters.
Unlike Harry, agencies aren’t dead, but many do seem quick to want to bury them[1]. The favorable aspects of agencies, highlighted in Part 1, come with baggage that often makes life difficult for agencies and those who work with them. However, a description of the agencies’ troubles is not the article’s goal. Rather, I wish to convey how a better understanding of agencies will facilitate working with them more effectively.
Read MoreThis two part series examines the positive and negative aspects of working with “agency lenders” or “agencies”. “Agency Lender” is a name given to a group of publicly controlled or officially affiliated lenders. They have either “multilateral” relationships – support from and for a large number of countries - or “bilateral” relationships, which historically entailed affiliation with one sovereign lender, which had bilateral relationships with sovereign borrowers. Agency lenders now lend to sovereign and non-sovereign entities and include export credit AGENCIES, multilateral development AGENCIES, and other bilateral and multilateral lending and finance AGENCIES. You now understand why these lenders are called agency lenders or agencies.
Read MoreThis two part series examines the positive and negative aspects of working with “agency lenders” or “agencies”. “Agency Lender” is a name given to a group of publicly controlled or officially affiliated lenders. They have either “multilateral” relationships – support from and for a large number of countries - or “bilateral” relationships, which historically entailed affiliation with one sovereign lender, which had bilateral relationships with sovereign borrowers. Agency lenders now lend to sovereign and non-sovereign entities and include export credit AGENCIES, multilateral development AGENCIES, and other bilateral and multilateral lending and finance AGENCIES. You now understand why these lenders are called agency lenders or agencies.
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