Our Commitment

In 2004, after two years of planning and negotiation, HSBC helped finance a deal to provide nearly 1,800 Volvo buses, serving 4.5 million passengers a day in Santiago, Chile. HSBC in London acted as financial arranger to Volvo Bus Corporation, the Swedish export credit agencies EKN and SEK and three Chilean bus operators.

Part of the largest public regeneration programme in Latin America, the Transantiago Bus Rapid Transit Project aimed to halve the number of buses in circulation, replacing them with high-capacity, low-emission buses that would serve some of the poorest areas of the city. It is believed the project could reduce pollution in Santiago by up to 77%.

Motors, gearboxes and chassis produced by Volvo in Sweden were shipped to Volvo's plant in Curitiba, Brazil, where the bus bodies were manufactured for final assembly. The nearly 1,800 completed buses were then driven 3,200 kilometres (2,000 miles) in convoy through Brazil and Argentina and across the Andes to Santiago.

Various elements of the HSBC Group worked together on the deal. Although the deal team was headed from London, the structuring of the overall finance package involved the expertise of export finance teams in São Paulo, Stockholm and Tokyo, as well as vital input and support from HSBC's corporate and trade finance teams in Santiago.

The success of the project helped earn the HSBC team a commendation for Deal of the Year 2005 by Trade Finance magazine. Transantiago was also planned to meet the public transport requirements stated in the Chilean government's Pollution Prevention and Removal Plan for the Metropolitan Region (PPDA) and exceeded them.