Proximo Latin America Deals of the Year 2026: The hot steppers
Proximo's Deals of the Year winners in Latin America did not need test the limits of bank and bond appetite to succeed. But it probably helped.
Proximo’s Latin America Deals of the Year are not always completely in-step with the market. Its awards are designed to recognise innovation and effort in the market rather than brute financing force. But there’s no denying that average deal size – and therefore the demands on banks and bond investors in the region – are going up.
According to Proximo Intelligence, the region raised $74.7 billion across 250 project and infrastructure financings in 2025, up from $65.2 billion a year earlier. In the eligibility window for these awards — Q4 2025 to Q3 2026 — volumes barely moved, at $74.5 billion, even as the number of transactions fell to 219 and the average deal size rose to $340 million.
Brazil supplied close to half of that total – thanks to active local lenders, and particularly BNDES. Mexico, a modest contributor in 2025, put $12.4 billion to work in the awards period. Banks accounted for just over half the debt, while bonds and DFIs did most of the rest. This was less a boom than a market clustering around more dependable credits and sponsors.
The ten award-winning financings do not prize size above all else. But the winners have a few themes in common. Holdco and platform structures, more often associated with US renewables and toll roads, made an appearance thanks to Atlas Renewable Energy and Actis. Chilean solar-plus-storage did get larger. DFIs still made the difference at the frontier — whether in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, or by opening a new debt market and asset class in Brazil.
Proximo chooses Deals of the Year to recognise both the application of large balance sheets to necessary infrastructure and the less common cases where sponsors and lenders found a cleaner way to allocate risk. Winners will be represented on panels at Exile Americas in Miami in November, while logos and banners are available in Proximo’s winners’ pack.
Refinancing - Atlas Renewable Energy
GIP’s Atlas put together a $3 billion five-year green refinancing for a solar and storage portfolio spanning Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay with seven international banks. The deal takes a capital structure that had grown asset by asset and refinances it as a single regional platform — a holdco proposition more often seen in the US than in Latin renewables.
Acquisition - Actis Venas Colombian Toll Roads
Actis launched its first Latin American toll-roads platform with a $1.6 billion acquisition financing for a 416km Colombian portfolio that it bought from Sacyr. The three-concession package - Pamplona–Cúcuta, Rumichaca–Pasto and Autopista al Mar 1 – combines recently completed 4G assets into a single ownership structure with revenue visibility stretching into the mid-2040s.
Power - Manzanillo Gas & Power
FICDIE-led Manzanillo Gas & Power closed a $1.067 billion limited-recourse financing for an 840MW LNG-to-power complex in the Dominican Republic, combining two CCGTs with import, floating storage, regasification and transmission in one debt package. IDB Invest and CAF sat alongside commercial banks on a seven-year structure that aligns long-term LNG supply with contracted offtake from the state distributors, and adds about 15% to the country’s installed capacity.
Renewables - Glenfarne RS Chile II
Glenfarne Group raised $1.044 billion of construction debt for a 1.1GW Chilean solar-plus-storage portfolio, one of the largest hybrid packages the market has put together. A three-bank club of BNP Paribas, Scotiabank and Société Générale underwrote the five-year loan, evidence that Chilean hybrids have moved well beyond boutique sizing.
Wind - Olavarria Wind
PCR and ArcelorMittal’s Acindar closed DFI-led financing for the 180MW Olavarría wind project and associated transmission in Argentina, with IFC and FinDev Canada alongside BBVA and Santander. The project sells power under direct corporate PPAs to industrial offtakers rather than a sovereign offtake — still a scarce structure in the Argentine wind market.
Roads - EPR Iguaçu
EPR Iguaçu raised BRL 9.2 billion of 24-year project debt — BRL 8.595 billion of tax-incentivised infrastructure debentures and BRL 605 million of BNDES Finem — for a 662km Paraná highway concession. The package funds a BRL 12.4 billion capex programme, including the dualisation of 462km, and shows the incentivised debenture market now taking the bulk of a long-dated Brazilian road financing.
Aviation - Bloco de Onze Aeroportos
Aena’s Bloco de Onze Aeroportos do Brasil financing is the largest airport debt package yet completed in the country: BRL 5.7 billion ($1.059 billion) of fully non-recourse, 22.5-year IPCA-linked debt, split between infrastructure debentures and BNDES Finem. The structure has to keep 11 airports in four states operating through construction, and builds in a pre-agreed window for additional long-term debt in 2029–31 once construction risk has been eliminated.
Water - Sabesp
Sabesp’s $2 billion structured A/B financing is the first IDB Invest A/B bond in Brazil and the largest blue bond issuance to date. A $200 million A loan sits beside a $1.8 billion B loan repackaged into Luxembourg-issued blue notes, with proceeds earmarked for sewage treatment and almost 10,000km of network across 322 São Paulo municipalities.
Emerging Energy - Acelen Renewables
Mubadala Capital’s $1.154 billion financing for Acelen’s 20,000 barrel-per-day HEFA biorefinery in Bahia is the first non-recourse project financing at this scale for sustainable aviation fuel out of the international bank market. Commercial banks and a DFI group including IFC, IDB Invest, BNDES and AIIB share a structure tied to a flexible feedstock mix — soybean oil, used cooking oil and macaúba grown on degraded land.
Digital Infrastructure - Ascenty Mexico
Brookfield and Digital Realty’s Ascenty closed a $180 million non-recourse project financing for the expansion of two data centres in Querétaro — a shift from the operator’s Brazilian holdco refinancings to an asset-level Mexican package. BNP Paribas, BBVA, Natixis and Scotiabank provided the five-year construction debt, a precedent for financing hyperscale growth outside Brazil.
