Government Backing
HKND said in the September e-mail that it’s gathering a group of investors to back the effort with plans to sell shares, possibly even an initial public offering, and that it will shore up financing for the canal by "putting into play our imagination and creativity." Wang hasn’t signaled whether banks might help with the financing.
Francisco Mayorga, an economist who was Nicaragua’s central bank governor in the 1990s, said that HKND will eventually be able to raise funding once the engineering and impact studies are complete. HKND said in an August e-mail that it would start to seek bids on the canal’s final design after the Nicaraguan government approves the environmental review.
"Mr. Wang will probably be able to find enough venture capitalists to launch the project and resort to the services of one of the leading investment banks of the world to structure an offer that may enable him to raise the rest of the funds in a sound combination of equity and debt," said Mayorga, who is an adviser to the board of the Inter American Development Bank.