Sector/Region: Logistics & Markets/EMEA/Republic of Georgia

In 2016, the Anaklia Development Consortium (ADC) won a tender for a 52-year BOT concession to develop the Anaklia Deep Sea Port and the Anaklia Free Industrial Zone on the Black Sea coast of the Republic of Georgia. (http://www.anakliadevelopment.com/)

Late in the spring of 2019, when a founding shareholder withdrew from the consortium, ADC appointed Griffin Capital as project finance advisor.

Six weeks after our appointment, we delivered a qualified equity participant. In addition to funding $75 million, and without reliance on prospective IFI’s as lenders, the equity participant proposed to raise up to $400 million in project term debt, subject to completion of customary due diligence.

In mid-October, ADC’s chairman met in New York with the qualified participant introduced by Griffin. However, ADC decided to pursue an alternative source of capital not introduced by Griffin. That source publicly withdrew from negotiations with the Government of Georgia and ADC on 28 October.

After granting ADC multiple extensions through 2019, the Government of Georgia announced on 9 January 2020 that ADC had lost the concession due to failure to meet its contractual commitments.  https://jamestown.org/program/russias-discreet-satisfaction-over-georgias-anaklia-port-debacle/  The Government of Georgia has announced plans for a new tender. https://civil.ge/archives/333770

Dr. Mark Bykowsky is widely considered one of the principal architects of the US Federal Communications Commission’s spectrum auctions.  While at the FCC, he initiated the use of experimental economics as a tool for addressing public policy questions.

Dr. Bykowsky independently developed the Audience Exchange, an algorithmic call market for participants in the +US$70 billion US market for the buying and selling of audience impressions for broadcast and cable television and radio (AdEx).

Griffin Capital was retained as exclusive advisor by Dr. Bykowsky to perform a strategic assessment of AdEx.  This included assessing and refining various capitalization strategies to develop and operate an electronic market serving buyers and sellers of advertising time on broadcast and cable television and other electronic media.  Griffin initiated contact with strategic partners and other qualified participants, working with Dr. Bykowsky and his colleagues and his legal, tax and accounting advisors to design a transaction to launch the AdEx market.

Sector/Region: Logistics & Markets/America (Brazil)

Griffin Capital assisted VIVO/Telecom Portugal (now Telefonica de España) in launching Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) services platform in association with Brazil’s major auto insurance carriers.

We were engaged as technical advisor to assist management in providing, on turn-key bases, several vehicle, fleet and asset tracking services utilizing Telefonica’s existing cellular network in what resulted in a substantial increase ($30+/month) in company’s ARPU as a result of the premium AVL services offered to consumer and commercial clients. As a bonus, the hardware mounted on each vehicle and asset that was being tracked and monitored was also was utilized by Telefonica’s engineering department to dynamically assess the cellular network Quality of Service (QOS) in real time and without having to deploy a separate (and costly) fleet of specialty vehicles to perform that same function.

The premium AVL services proved so successful in Brazil that Telefonica de España’s adopted and deployed the same platform throughout its properties globally.