General Information
Operating since 1990, COFIDES provides cost-effective financial support for projects in developing, transitional and emerging countries in which Spanish companies are involved as investors. With own resources of €46 Million, COFIDES is majority owned (61%) by the Spanish Government through different public institutions, namely the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade (ICEX), the Institute for Official Credit (ICO) and the National Innovation Enterprise (ENISA). The remaining 39% is held by the three largest Spanish commercial banking groups (BBVA, SCH and Banco Sabadell).

COFIDES operates by investing its own resources or mobilising third party funding from different instruments managed by COFIDES. Thus, COFIDES manages two Spanish Government trust funds established to support Spanish investments abroad (FIEX and FONPYME) and cofinancing facilities established with Multilateral Financial Institutions such as the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Inter- American Development Bank (IADB) / Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) and the IADB / Inter-American Investment Corporation (IIC).

COFIDES has supported projects in 48 different countries and has today a global investment capacity of €800 million with an upper limit per individual project of €25 million.

Equity Investments
COFIDES can take minority and temporary equity stakes in the projects it supports through ordinary or preferential shares. There is normally a put option agreement to sell these shares to the investors after a certain period of time. COFIDES also offers quasi-equity products, such as subordinated, convertible or income participating loans with the aim to reinforce the financial strength of the project by increasing the project company’s own resources.

Loans
COFIDES can also provide financial support to the projects through senior medium or long term loans.

Other Support
COFIDES counsels potential investors to optimise the project financial scheme and gives advice on projectrelated environmental matters. Through its Representative Offices abroad in Beijing (China), Casablanca (Morocco) and Mexico D.F (Mexico) it also provides counsel in the pre-investment stages on issues of different nature. Moreover, COFIDES makes available to investors the experience acquired after fifteen years of operations and offers institutional support to the investments.