Tony K. Muoser, a Managing Director in Citigroup's Global Project & Structured Trade Finance group, has played an important role in significant nonrecourse financings for the power sector and has been instrumental in developing financing structures for the US and the international power markets. He joined Citigroup in 1999 and has over 15 years of project finance experience in a wide range of industries with a major focus on power generation projects but also including pipelines, oil and natural gas, mining, pulp and paper projects. Mr. Muoser has been involved in transactions in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Morocco and the Philippines.
He has extensive transaction experience with multi-source financings, major export credit agencies and multilateral agencies. He was previously an Executive Director in the project finance group at UBS Warburg and prior to that a senior member of the project finance group at Credit Suisse First Boston.
In a difficult market environment in 2002, Mr. Muoser led the Citigroup teams that successfully arranged nonrecourse financings for the AlphaGen Power Project in Michigan, the RISEP Power Project in Rhode Island, the Wildflower Power Project in California and the La Rosita and Altamira II Power Projects in Mexico, raising a total of US $ 1.5 billion in financings.
Citigroup's Global Project & Structured Trade Finance group has been consistently recognized as the leading advisor, loan arranger and bond underwriter for projects and a leading innovator in the field. Since 1993, Citigroup has ranked number one among all commercial and investment banks in both dollar amount and number of deals done in debt financings for the utility and power industries. In addition, for the past three years Citigroup ranked number one in the league tables for project loans and bonds. Recently, Citigroup has received no less than 5 "Deal of the Year" awards in different categories for its 2002 power transactions. Citigroup's Global Project & Structured Trade Finance Group Projects received the following awards:
-Latin American Power
Deal of the Year - Altamira II -Project Finance
-Best Project Financing - La Rosita - Corporate Finance
-North American Project Bond of the Year - Southern Power - Project Finance
-Americas Bond Deal of the Year - Southern Power - Project Finance International
-North American Lease Deal of the Year - AlphaGen Power - Project Finance
Even under the currently challenging market conditions, Citigroup is uniquely well positioned to access project capital for its clients in the most efficient way and from a number of alternative sources.
While the past year was marked by the meltdown of the US merchant power sector and the resulting liquidity issues for project sponsors, Muoser sees 2003 as a transition year. "The sector will primarily have to focus on restructuring transactions. This will require flexibility and patience from all parties involved," Muoser said. "The expected shake-out will accelerate and lead to an increased number of asset divestitures." Muoser predicts a trend back to more conservative and basic principles of nonrecourse financing.
He believes the financial markets will remain open for more traditional, well-structured financings with an identifiable credit story.
