concession

The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch service is reporting that groups led by Abertis and Goldman Sachs are the only two remaining bidders for the 75 year lease concession on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The third group comprising Cintra and Macquarie - two of the most aggressive bidders in past concession procurements - are out.

Cintra and Macquarie one of the three known teams bidding for the Pennsylvania Turnpike lease have dropped out of the bidding. They have told their bankers they are free to work with the remaining bidders on the best and final offers due this Friday.

Cintra and Macquarie said they weren't prepared to increase their bid, so they won't be making any Best And Final Offer.

"They told us the numbers didn't cut it," one of the bankers said.

There's talk that Macquarie is not in the bidding for the lease concession on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Two sources have said TOLLROADSnews was wrong in including Macquarie among the active bidders.

So far as we can establish we are right. We're assured Macquarie is still in, though no one is talking for attribution.

Pennsylvania received bids for the 75 year Turnpike lease concession last Friday but there was a bid within 10% of the top bid triggering another week for best and final offers, Governor Ed Rendell said at a new conference this morning.

The Wall Street Journal reports that two bids have been submitted for the 75 year toll concession on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It says the bids have been made by Abertis and a Cintra-Macquarie partnership.

We don't have any confirmation or refutation of this report.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's implicit bid in the state's lease concession procurement is $5.3b, versus a likely top bid by private sector bidders in the range $9b to $13b. The $5.3b implicit bid is cited by the Commonwealth Foundation thinktank in Harrisburg today.

Pennsylvania DOT has set a new deadline for bids on the Pennsylvania Turnpike concession at the end of this week. But while there is a real intention on the part of the state to make the new deadline stick it may slip again like last week's, according to people who can only be characterized as insiders.

Florida DOT have put the Jacksonville outer beltway concession procurement on hold, they've announced. FDOT District 2 secretary Charles Baldwin says state lawyers told him yesterday morning they were no longer sure that he could tell bidders on the First Coast Outer Beltway concession that they would be exempt from property tax.

Governor Rendell's staff say the deadline for bids for a longterm concession on the Pennsylvania Turnpike have been pushed back. On April 16 they had said they wanted bids by the end of the month (this evening). Today they are saying the bids will be accepted up to a deadline as much as two weeks off - mid-May.

Qualified bidders are being asked for offers on a concession agreement the terms of which were outlined April 16.

Jose Lopez head of Cintra in North America more than once has explained in his accented but very clear english his company's approach to bidding for toll concessions: "We study very hard, we examine every aspect, we bring in our experts, sometimes other experts, we do traffic and revenue studies, not just one sometimes we get another. We think about the risks, we look at the costs, what will it cost us to borrow, what is the rate of return our shareholders expect.

"We do lots of due diligence.