TRACK RECORD 03 |Infrastructure
Georgian Co-Investment Fund,
Georgia
Mtkvari HPP: Infrastructure Turnaround and Structured Exit
Key Metrics
Installed capacity: 54.1 MW
Annual generation:260 GWh
ca$230 million
Final project cost:Flood standard upgraded to:10,000-year
Probable Maximum Flood design
The Situation
GCF acquired the Mtkvari hydropower plant in 2014 as a distressed asset – originally started in 2009 and abandoned after the financial crisis. The project came in approximately $100 million over the original budget and eight years behind schedule. Along the way a geological fault caused a tunnel-boring machine collapse requiring eighteen months of remedial work, a key contractor was replaced, and the project operated without an EPC contractor throughout.
My Role
I was instrumental in the contractor negotiations throughout – a role explicitly recognised by the CEO. The approach was deliberate: making counterparties feel heard and understood rather than attacked, which allowed genuinely difficult conversations to reach resolution faster. Where negotiation failed, the decision to terminate was made jointly and without hesitation. I led the international arbitration process against a previous contractor, managing internal legal staff, Georgian counsel and international counsel Shearman & Sterling, concurrently with construction and exit structuring. The safety standard was upgraded from a 200-year to a 10,000-year flood design. The exit was structured as a pre-commissioning sale before the plant had generated a single unit of electricity. The structure protected our position while giving the buyer the confidence to proceed: staged payments, a buyer put option, share pledge, step-in rights and conduct restrictions, each assembled specifically for this transaction.
The Result
The plant commissioned successfully after the sale. The arbitration was ring-fenced within the sale structure and did not prevent closing.
The asset was subsequently reacquired post-commissioning, possible because the structural flexibility had been built into the original exit terms.
“We sold a hydropower plant before it had produced a single kilowatt – with construction unfinished, arbitration live and the full cost overrun still on the books. Every term in that structure existed because we had mapped exactly what the buyer needed to feel safe enough to sign and exactly what we could not afford to concede. That is not a standard exit. It is structuring in its most precise form and getting it right meant the asset was saved, not written off.”
Track Record
Four transaction examples: Each one different in sector, structure and conditions.
Together they represent the range of work I have done and the standard I hold myself to.