Infrastructure Quebec advises on US$470 million CHUM project

On May 26, 2010, Fiera Axium Recherche L.P. was awarded a contract for the design, construction, finance, operation and maintenance of the new medical research centre (the "Project") of the Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal ("CHUM") in Montréal, Quebec. CHUM is one of the largest university hospital centres in North America and is comprised of the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital, the Notre-Dame Hospital and the Saint-Luc Hospital. The Project, valued at approximately $470 million, will include a construction period of approximately 40 months plus an operational term of 30 years from the scheduled substantial completion date. To finance the Project, the consortium placed with Canadian institutional investors short term senior bonds and long term senior bonds for an aggregate amount in excess of $392 million. The unwrapped bonds were rated A (low) by DBRS and A3 by Moody's. In addition to the bond financing and their equity commitments, the sponsors are also providing additional liquidity by way of the mezzanine facility. The Project is the first health P3 transaction to close in Quebec. Infrastructure Quebec advised CHUM in connection with the Project and was represented in house by Claudie Imbleau-Chagnon and Eve-Marie Le Fort assisted by Fasken Martineau with a team led by Claude Gendron, and including Andrew Ford, Louis Séguin, Lévy Bazinet, Jean Philippe Gagné, Nicolas Leblanc, Helmut Johannsen and David Little (project documents); Marc Novello (financing); Gilles Carli and Jean-François Perreault (tax); and Martin Sheehan and Eric Simard (procurement).