About Verdigris

Verdigris provides advice to investors seeking to invest in project finance / non-recourse transactions. Advice centers around assessment of the adequacy of risk pass-through to project counterparties and the consequent residual risk remaining with the investor.

Clients are predominantly South African financial institutions investing in energy and infrastructure projects through asset classes including equity, senior and mezzanine debt and derivative instruments used to hedge project cash flows.

Verdigris provides capital raising advice and financial engineering to non-recourse projects and has undertaken algorithm development and revenue optimisation for trading clients.

Verdigris also builds lenders' base case models for infrastructure projects looking for funding, and operationalises existing base case models to simplify them for every-day use and to incorporate projects' actual experience, as laid out in their financial statements.

Some achievements:

• Structured and arranged the first project finance hedge syndication (i.e. sale of a hedge as an asset) to a non bank in South Africa.
• Advised investors on >20 REIPPPP (South African renewable energy programme) projects with a value of ~ R50 billion, leading to investment of ~ R6 billion.

Douglas Lorimer

Verdigris is owned and run by Douglas Lorimer. The combination of qualifications below is the practice's main point of difference: the same person reads the finance documents, builds the model and writes the code.

• Actuary — Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, UK
• MPhil, Finance and Investment — University of Pretoria
• LLB — University of South Africa
• BBusSci, Information Systems (Honours) — University of Cape Town

Profile on LinkedIn.

Calculation Actuarial

Calculation Actuarial is a sister practice. It offers a web-based tool that automates Loss of Support and Loss of Income actuarial valuations, aimed at attorneys working on contingency, with free draft reports and immediate results once data is entered. More at calculation.co.za.