COFIDES - Compañía Española de Financiación del Desarrollo

C/ Príncipe de Vergara nº 132
28002 Madrid
Spain
Tel: +34 91 562 6008
Fax: +34 91 561 0015
Email: cofides@cofides.es
www.cofides.es

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 over €70 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, Banco Santander and Banco de 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) and the Inter- American Development Bank (IADB) / Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF).
COFIDES has supported projects in more than 65 different countries and has today a global investment capacity that exceeds €1 billion with an upper limit per individual project of €30 million.

Instruments

Equity Investment

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 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 advises potential investors to optimise the project financial scheme and gives advice on project related environmental matters. Through its Representative Office abroad in 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 twenty years of operations and offers institutional support to the investments.