Greenhill beefs up infrastructure team

Investment bank Greenhill has expanded its Americas infrastructure team by bringing in two additional advisory professionals, InfrastructureInvestor has learned.

Christophe Petit, formerly a director in the infrastructure and structured finance team at French investment bank Société Générale, will join the firm in July as a principal, according to a market source familiar with his move. He will be based in New York.

Andrew Deye

Andrew Deye, Assistant Secretary in the Department of Economic Development and Commerce of the Government of Puerto Rico, has resigned his position to join Greenhill as a senior associate at Greenhill, according to the source. He will be based in Chicago.

Deye and Petit are both familiar with Greenhill’s Americas investment banking head, Rob Collins, from their previous positions and transactions.

Deye used to work as an associate under Collins while both still worked at Morgan Stanley in Chicago and advised the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on its unsuccesful attempt to lease its turnpike. When Collins left Morgan Stanley last year to start up the Americas infrastructure team at Greenhill, Deye left for his position with Puerto Rico’s Department of Economic Development and Commerce.

Christoph Petit

Petit and Collins go back to the $1.8 billion Chicago Skyway auction in 2004, on which Collins advised Chicago while he was still at Goldman Sachs and Petit acted as mandated lead arranger for the winning bidders, Cintra and Macquarie. Since then, Petit has arranged debt for several other landmark deals in the US, including the $903 million Port of Miami Tunnel and the Denver FasTracks Eagle public-private partnership, according to a biography.

With their additions, Greenhill will have about 10 people focused on infrastructure investment banking globally. Aside from the Chicago and New York offices, Greenhill also has infrastructure professionals in its European and Australian offices, as well as Tokyo, Japan.

In the US, the firm’s been keeping busy on advisory mandates in the private infrastructure sector. For example, earlier this year Greenhill advised Ports America, a port operator owned by Highstar Capital, on its sale of an intermodal rail yard to railroad operator Kansas City Southern. Alongside William Blair & Company, Greenhill is also co-advising LambdaStar Infrastructure Partners on its financial closing for a parking garage deal in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Greenhill is also likely to be advising a potential bidder on Puerto Rico’s long-term lease of two existing toll roads. A request for qualifications for the deal was released earlier this week, with responses due 29 July.