BNP Paribas wins 'Best Project Finance House in the Middle East' - Euromoney Award

The award was presented at the Euromoney awards for Excellence Middle East Dinner 2008 recently at the Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai, and the news was later published in the Euromoney magazine.

The award recognised BNP Paribas' pioneering role in project finance, especially since the bank has played key roles in a number of remarkable projects across a wide array of sectors (aluminium, power and petrochemicals) and challenging market conditions.

To name a few, BNP Paribas acted as financial advisor to the preferred bidder mandated lead arranger in the world's largest independent power and water project: the $3.3bn Marafiq project.

It was also lead arranger and bookrunner in the debt financing for the $7bn Emirates Aluminium project.

Moreover, it was the financial advisors and one of the lead arranging banks on the largest aluminum financing projects in Qatar, Qatalum.

Despite strong competition, other Landmark transactions were also closed in the second quarter of 2008, such as Saudi Kayan Petrochemicals for which BNP Paribas also acted as financial advisor along with ABC and Samba in Saudi Arabia, in Yemen LNG also, and many others are in the pipeline. Building on its strategic advisory role, BNP Paribas is currently advising on future significant transactions that may come to fruition this year covering an impressive array of sectors, across the region, especially in Abu Dhabi, as well as Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Commenting on the news, Mr. Jean-Christophe Durand, BNP Paribas' GCC Regional Director, said:

"The award from Euromoney once again reiterates our status as the pioneering financial institution for project finance as well as structure finance as a whole regionally and globally. The award will further strengthen our already established position in this category especially in energy, commodities, and export finance."

This is the sixteenth time the magazine has handed out its awards, which are widely regarded as the benchmarks for excellence in the global financial services industry.

The 2008 awards attracted more than 600 submissions from the world's leading banks and brokerage houses.

Euromoney's dedicated research team and awards panel then rated all the submissions on both quantitative and qualitative factors including KPIs, financial ratios and innovation over the 12-month period to decide the award winners.

In addition to receiving the 'Best Project Finance House in the Middle East', BNP Paribas also received the following awards from Euromoney this year: 'Best Bank Western Europe; Best Equity Derivatives House; Best Credit Derivatives House; Best Bank: France; Best Investment Bank: France, and Best Debt House: Hungary.'