Project finance league tables 2023: JP Morgan defies accepted market logic
Proximo Data has finalised its project finance market league tables for 2023 and the global rankings for lenders, legal counsel and financial advisors show little change at the top: in the lender ranking, Japanese and French banks continue to dominate, taking seven of the top ten places.
With $19.1 billion lent (based on actual allocations) in 2023, MUFG remains number one for global project finance lending. The bank provided around $1.5 billion more volume than Santander in second place and roughly $3.8 more than SMBC in third place.
The same banks are also top three MLAs for global project finance, where the total volume numbers are based on the following calculation for each deal included: deal debt volume divided by the number of MLAs. Consequently the MLA volume figure can differ from the actual allocation figure.
In the legal sector White & Case lead the pack convincingly with around $12 billion more in deal volume counselled than nearest rival Allen & Overy, and another $1 billion more than Latham & Watkins in third place.
On the financial advisory side, Societe Generale also has a convincing lead with $21.4 billion of deal volume – around $5 billion more than MUFG in second place. But the real surprise is JP Morgan, which although only fourteenth in terms of global project finance lending, takes third place for financial advisor deal volume. The deal volume it advised on was three times greater than its project finance lending, an anomaly given the traditional project finance mantra that putting your balance sheet on the line is what attracts advisory mandates.
The full league tables with regional breakdowns are available to download here. Please note, each project finance table has an infrastructure finance table next to it. The infrastructure finance numbers are project finance volume plus corporate loans or ancillary facilities raised for specific projects.
