By Nick Hedley
Singapore’s Temasek and British financial services group HSBC
have launched Pentagreen Capital, a financier of sustainable infrastructure
projects in Southeast Asia.
Temasek and HSBC have injected US$150
million of equity into Pentagreen, which aims to make over $1 billion of loans
within five years, the new company said in a statement.
“Pentagreen is committed to accelerating
the development of sustainable infrastructure in Asia by removing the barriers
that can prevent marginally bankable projects from accessing capital,” it said.
“It will seek to achieve this through a combination of technical assistance and
blended finance to catalyse other sources of capital, with support from its
strategic partners.”
The company has partnered with the
Asian Development Bank and Singapore’s Clifford Capital Holdings. It will
initially target opportunities in Southeast Asia, particularly in clean
transport, renewable energy, energy storage, and water and waste management.
Pentagreen will be led by CEO Marat
Zapparov, who has worked with the International Finance Corporation, Clifford
Capital and HSBC.
“Pentagreen is ideally positioned to
be an alternative provider of debt capital to accelerate the development of
sustainable infrastructure in Asia,” Zapparov said. “We aim to fill the gap
between traditional financing options from banks and development financiers and
catalyze the flow of capital to innovative projects by bringing flexible debt
financing solutions to the table.”
Pentagreen will operate independently
from HSBC and Temasek, although the two founding shareholders will be
represented on the company’s board.
The board will be chaired by Kai
Nargolwala, who is currently chairman of Singapore Pools and 65 Equity
Partners. Other board members include HSBC’s Stuart Lea and Kelvin Tan, and Temasek’s
Connie Chan.
Lea, who is head of global banking for
South Asia and global head of real assets finance at HSBC, said: “In Asia, many
infrastructure projects face varying degrees of barriers to bankability.
Pentagreen’s goal is to help remove those barriers and unlock other sources of
capital.”
Chan, who is Temasek’s managing director
for investment, financial services, said: “We believe that we are in a critical
decade to reverse the effects of climate change, and partnerships such as this
demonstrate Temasek’s unwavering commitment to playing our part for a more
sustainable world where every generation can prosper.”