Auckland-based Hawaiki Cable has hired Natixis to find equity investors to close the financing for a new subsea cable that will link Australia and New Zealand with the US.
A spokesperson for the trans-Pacific scheme, which will also link a number of…
Auckland-based Hawaiki Cable has hired Natixis to find equity investors to close the financing for a new subsea cable that will link Australia and New Zealand with the US.
A spokesperson for the trans-Pacific scheme, which will also link a number of South Pacific Islands and Hawaii, said the project will cost about US$300m but declined to disclose how much has been raised so far.
It is one of the first privately owned subsea cables to be funded through project financing, an approach that has been pioneered by Natixis.
Jean-Pierre Geremy, global head of telecoms, structured and asset finance at Natixis, states that it is actively working on similar projects that have yet to be announced.
Hawaiki’s largest shareholder to date is an investment vehicle owned by its CEO Rémi Galasso.
The project began development in October 2012 with the goal of using fibre with a designed capacity of over 25 Tbps to future proof Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands’ economies with direct access to the US market.
It sees low competition in this space, with existing cables Southern Cross (Spark, Singtel, Verizon) coming online in November 2000, and Endeavour (Telstra) being ready for service in 2008.
Galasso said in a statement that it had already received a carrier licence in Australia and New Zealand in view of rolling out the network by 2017.
“Now is the time to involve a leading infrastructure finance bank to help us crossing the finish line,” he said.
In January, Natixis helped wrap up project financing for a Brazil-US subsea cable called Seabras-1, which is owned by independent cable operator Seaborn Networks and private equity firm Partners Group.
