| SynGest Inc. (www.SynGest.com) CEO, Jack Oswald was interviewed by Jim Lane, the Editor of BiofuelsDigest.com with specific recommendations for the USDA (and other) U.S. government loan guarantee programs. Details can be found here: Bond financing may break biofuels finance logjam
The program recommendations were developed by John May of Stern Brothers of St.Louis (www.sternbrothers.com) with key contributions by John Kirkwood, partner at Krieg DeVault of Indianapolis (www.kriegdevault.com/), Mark J. Riedy and Greg Sandomirsky, partners at Mintz Levin of Washington, DC (www.mintz.com), as outlined by BiofuelsDigest. The bond program was developed to make up for the lack of commercial bank lending interest in and capacity for advanced renewable fuels and bioproducts projects. As quoted by BiofuelsDigest, "Syngest CEO Jack Oswald agrees: 'Bond investors provide "patient" capital that provides term lengths that match the project life better than a commercial loan. Bonds do not include "sweep" provisions whereby the commercial bank lender "sweeps" any excess cash generated to reduce the principal of the loan. When this happens, it reduces the returns to equity investors and thereby makes it much more difficult to attract equity capital.The bond market is 10X larger than the commercial debt market. Higher levels of due diligence are performed than is true with small lenders because a professional investment bank performs the underwriting and the bond investors also do similar due diligence. Loan servicing is performed by a trustee that has a higher level of professionalism and process technology to assure greater compliance and overall loan processing. In the worst case scenario, a liquidation, these trustees are far more capable of making debt holders whole than is a small lender.'" "It is imperative that the U.S. Government adapt rapidly to the needs of projects that will bolster the U.S. economy and maintain our lead in Clean Energy technologies", said Serge Randhava, Chairman of SynGest Inc. "The Stern Brothers bond proposal is the best idea we have seen in a month of Sundays." |
