Structured Finance
CBR Business Research & Management is an independent advisory firm specialising in the structuring, arrangement and negotiation of cross-border financing. Over sixty years of combined senior experience across export credit, multilateral finance and real estate capital markets — in Europe, Latin America and the United States.
What we do
Buyer credits under the OECD Arrangement, ECA-backed facilities, multilateral and development finance, and sovereign structures for industrial, energy, agro-industrial and infrastructure projects.
Explore the practice →Senior debt, stretch senior, mezzanine and equity for residential, commercial and specialised real estate across Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom and selected European markets.
Explore the practice →Independent advisory representation. CBR is not a lender, a deposit-taking institution, a broker-dealer or an underwriter. We hold no balance sheet in the transactions we advise on, which means we carry no book-running or placement conflict — the structure we recommend is the one we believe closes, not the one we are long.
How we work
We test the project against what the market will actually fund, before anyone incurs cost. If it is not financeable as presented, we say so in the first meeting.
We design the capital architecture: instrument, tenor, security package, jurisdiction, guarantee and risk allocation.
We take the structure to the counterparties that fund that specific risk — not to a distribution list.
We lead the negotiation of terms, documentation and conditions precedent through to drawdown.
Senior-only execution
There is no analyst layer, no handover after the pitch, and no volume model. We take a limited number of mandates because the value we add is judgement in the room, not throughput.
01 — International Structured & Export Finance
Large industrial, energy and agro-industrial projects in emerging and frontier markets are rarely financed by commercial debt alone. They are financed by structures — combining export credit agency cover, multilateral participation, sovereign or corporate guarantees, and commercial tranches, each sized to the risk it is willing to carry.
We have been building those structures for four decades, on both sides of the table: as advisor to exporters and sponsors, and as counterparty to ministries and public agencies.
Capabilities
Facility reference
Indicative parameters under the OECD Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits and adjacent frameworks. Applicable terms depend on the sovereign risk classification, the eligible content audit and each agency's own underwriting.
| Facility | Coverage | Maximum repayment term | Risk mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|
| OECD buyer credit | Up to 85% of the eligible export contract value | Up to 15 years for most projects; up to 22 years under the Climate Change Sector Understanding and the nuclear sector understanding | Comprehensive political and commercial risk cover |
| ECA untied and direct lending | Variable; strategic supply or commodity-linked | Agency-specific, typically long tenor | Sovereign or tier-one bank obligation |
| Multilateral A/B loan | Co-financed tranches from USD 50m | Long-tenor amortising, set by the institution | Preferred creditor status of the multilateral lender |
| Political risk insurance | Expropriation, transfer and inconvertibility, political violence | Rolling, renewable | Public agency or private syndicate cover |
Indicative only. The OECD Arrangement is periodically revised; the terms above reflect the framework as modernised in July 2023, under which the previous country-income differentiation was removed. Each transaction is assessed against the version in force at the time of application.
Risk
Cross-border facilities fail on non-commercial risk, not on project economics. Each one has an instrument that answers it — the work is knowing which, and sizing it before a committee asks.
Comprehensive agency guarantees protecting hard-currency debt service against central bank moratoria and exchange restrictions.
Multilateral participation, which carries preferred creditor treatment in practice and aligns dispute resolution across jurisdictions.
Extension of amortisation beyond commercial banking ceilings so that debt service tracks the real operating life of an industrial asset.
A commercial tranche structured to absorb what agency cover does not reach, sized so that it does not break the blended pricing the sponsor can carry.
02 — Real Estate Capital Advisory
Development capital is abundant and badly matched. The constraint is rarely the absence of lenders — it is the absence of a structure that fits the asset, the timeline and the sponsor's balance sheet at the same time.
We model the project, define the capital stack it can actually support, and take it to the specific institutions, funds and private lenders that fund that profile. Sponsors receive indicative terms in a compressed timeframe and a single point of accountability through to closing.
Capabilities
Facilities
Ranges are indicative of the mandates we take, not a product menu. Loan-to-cost and loan-to-value depend on the asset, the market, the sponsor's track record and where the scheme sits in its planning cycle.
Construction debt for residential, commercial and hospitality schemes, structured on limited or non-recourse terms where the asset and the sponsor support it.
Short-dated liquidity for site acquisition, planning gain and the period before a development facility can be drawn.
Mezzanine injection, subordinated debt and sponsor recapitalisation for schemes facing a maturity wall or a fragmented lender group.
Joint-venture and programmatic equity between developers and institutional capital, including family offices and private credit funds.
Asset classes
Land acquisition, senior construction debt and preferred tranches for multi-family and build-to-rent. Underwritten on planning certainty and a defensible absorption schedule.
Acquisition debt, refurbishment facilities and operator–sponsor recapitalisations for resort and urban assets. Underwritten on operating cash flow rather than on exit value alone.
Development and structured facilities for clinical and care assets, where the covenant of the operating tenant carries as much weight as the building.
Development finance and forward-funding for commercial, mixed-use and logistics schemes. Underwritten on pre-let covenants and lease duration.
Bridging lines and co-investment vehicles for zoned and masterplanned positions, staged against entitlement milestones and infrastructure delivery.
Selected projects
Residential, hospitality and logistics schemes on which CBR's principals have worked. Sponsor names and terms are withheld under confidentiality; detailed references are available to qualified counterparties under NDA.
Images are for illustrative purposes.
Advisory architecture
CBR operates between the borrower and institutional capital markets, in transactions that standard corporate banking will not underwrite alone. The differentiator is not access to capital — everyone claims that. It is the ability to design a structure a credit committee will actually approve, and to negotiate it to financial close.
Financing architecture
Designing debt facilities that survive cross-border feasibility and credit committee underwriting. We calibrate debt capacity, multi-tranche seniority and OECD-consensus terms until the transaction is bankable as presented — or we say it is not.
Four decades of relationships
Direct engagement with the counterparties that fund the specific risk in question: export credit agencies, multilateral development banks, commercial banking syndicates, private credit funds and family offices. Not a distribution list.
Through to financial close
Carrying the transaction from indicative term sheet to credit sanction, legal drafting, satisfaction of conditions precedent and first drawdown. The person who designed the structure is the person in the room when the terms are set.
Governance
CBR acts exclusively as an independent advisor. We do not lend, do not underwrite, do not place our own paper and do not hold a position in any transaction we advise on. That is why the recommendation you receive is the structure most likely to close — not the one that suits a balance sheet you cannot see.
Execution
Indicative for a cross-border facility of institutional scale. Timelines move with the counterparty, the jurisdiction and the quality of the sponsor's own information — we set them against your calendar at mandate, not against a template.
Every mandate is run against the OECD Arrangement, the environmental and social standards each participating institution applies, and standard Loan Market Association documentation.
Applied intelligence
CBR uses artificial intelligence in documentary analysis, in precedent retrieval and in the preparation of negotiations. It does not use it to decide the structure, it does not seat it at the table, and it allows no output to reach a credit committee without verification by the person who signs it.
This page explains where that line sits, why it sits there, and how you can verify it.
The question that matters
When a sponsor hands over an EPC contract, a financial model and the prior correspondence with an agency, the legitimate question is no longer only what the advisor will do with that information. It is where it will be held, who can read it, and whether it will be used to train a third party's system.
And when that advisor returns a term sheet bound for a credit committee, the second question is just as legitimate: who wrote it, and who answers if a parameter is wrong.
Both answers are below, in writing. Neither of them is “trust us”.
Where it works
Our process runs to four phases and eighteen weeks. Artificial intelligence works on the volume tasks — reading, extracting, cross-checking, verifying — that in a financial institution occupy a layer of analysts. CBR has no such layer: it replaces it with systems, and keeps the judgement of its principals intact, which is what you are retaining.
A file brings together several thousand pages in two or three languages: contracts, price annexes, schedules, audited accounts, permits and correspondence with agencies. The system extracts the contract value, the national origin of supplies, the milestone calendar, the model's assumptions and the beneficial ownership into structured fields. The principal verifies the extraction against the source.
The value is not the speed. It is that a system does not prioritise under deadline pressure, and therefore does not omit.
Four decades of transactions hold solutions to problems that recur: how a sovereign counter-guarantee was resolved in a ministerial line, what inconvertibility wording a given agency accepted, what objection a committee raised and how it was answered. That archive is searchable. When your transaction resembles an earlier one, you do not pay for us to solve it again from nothing.
Before a structure goes before a committee, we put it through the objections that kind of institution characteristically raises: coverage-ratio sensitivity in the downside case, sufficiency of the security package, construction risk exposure, fit of the tenor to the asset's cycle. It is not a conceptual novelty: it is the preparation an experienced negotiator already does, executed exhaustively and on the record.
If our promise is to design structures a committee approves, rehearsing the committee meeting before walking into it is the direct verification of that promise.
The criterion line
The proportion shifts across the four phases of a mandate. By the time the transaction reaches the negotiating table, the lower band has all but disappeared.
Cognitive agents
Our timelines depend on variables we do not control, and the one that weighs most is the quality of the sponsor's own information. We say so on the Approach page and it holds on every mandate.
A cognitive agent deployed in your organisation acts on that variable. It sits on your systems, answers our information requests, chases what is missing, and keeps working after closing — when the reporting obligations that consume your team's time for years begin.
It is not a tool we sell you. It is part of the mandate, with scope, limits and liability set out in writing before it is switched on.
| Agent | What it does | What it never does | Phase |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data room | Sits on your document repository, answers information requests and flags gaps against the funding agency's checklist | It does not judge whether a document is sufficient. It reports that it exists or is missing; whether it serves is a principal's call | 01–02 |
| Conditions precedent | Tracks the status of every condition precedent across sponsor, lawyers, notaries, registries and lenders. Reports, chases and escalates | It does not certify that a condition has been satisfied. Verification belongs to legal counsel | 04 |
| Post-close reporting | Covenant compliance, drawdown requests, environmental and social reporting to the agency, maturity and breach alerts | It does not file with the agency or the lender on your behalf without express approval | After closing |
| Multilingual reconciliation | Detects substantive divergences between language versions of the same document | It does not translate contractual documentation for signature. It flags the divergence; legal counsel resolves it | 02–04 |
The line
What follows is not a statement of principles. It is the wording we incorporate into the mandate when a client asks for it, and which you may hold us to contractually.
No regulatory parameter comes from a model's memory. Every regulatory figure appearing in a CBR document — maximum tenor, coverage percentage, country risk classification, premium rate — comes from retrieval over the text in force, with citation to the source and to the applicable version.
No output reaches a client or a financial institution without verification by the principal who signs it. Human oversight is not a courtesy: it is the condition on which the product exists.
Artificial intelligence is not in the negotiating room. The person who designed the structure negotiates it, without an assistant and without a screen.
The capital structure is a principal's decision. The system can run fifty scenarios; which one is defended before a committee is decided by a person who answers for it.
No material covered by a confidentiality agreement is processed in services that do not offer a contractual prohibition on training from input data, a data processing agreement under Article 28 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679, standard contractual clauses for international transfers with a documented transfer impact assessment, and contractually defined retention and deletion policies.
Every agent deployed in your organisation declares that it is an artificial intelligence system to any person it interacts with, in accordance with Article 50 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689.
The scope, the limits and the liability regime of every agent are set out in writing before it is switched on. No agent goes live on a verbal understanding.
Compliance
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 — the Artificial Intelligence Act — applies in stages. In July 2026, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 deferred the high-risk obligations to 2 December 2027 and reworded the AI literacy duty, but did not postpone the obligations already in force. AI literacy obligations have applied since February 2025, and the duty to inform people that they are interacting with an AI system since August 2026.
| Obligation | Binding since | CBR's position |
|---|---|---|
| AI literacy — art. 4 | 2 February 2025 | Documented training for the whole team and an internal register of the systems in use |
| General-purpose AI — ch. V | 2 August 2025 | Verified when contracting each provider |
| Transparency — art. 50 | 2 August 2026 | Every deployed agent declares what it is to the person it interacts with |
| High risk — Annex III | 2 December 2027 | CBR expressly excludes consumers and retail clients; the scope analysis is documented and reviewed before every deployment |
The full protocol
The seven commitments above form part of a wider governance protocol covering provider selection, handling of confidential material, verification of outputs, team training and the liability regime of deployed agents.
It is provided to qualified counterparties on request, and may be annexed to the engagement letter.
Selected transactions
The following reflects transactions structured, arranged or advised on by CBR's principals across their professional careers, including mandates completed prior to the formation of the firm. Counterparty names are withheld under confidentiality. Detailed references are available to qualified counterparties under NDA.
Structured finance and real estate capital
Project development and financing structure · 235,000 hectares · Latin America
2025 — PresentReceivables assignment and factoring facility
2024Designed and structured through to institutional equity entry · Latin America
2021 — 2023Bilateral framework facility · Latin America
2015 — 2017Multi-jurisdiction facilities with ECA cover · Italy, Canada, Argentina, Belgium
2002 — 2005ECA buyer credit line · Latin America
1999 — 2002ECA-backed sovereign facility · Latin America
1998 — 2001
Past transactions are not indicative of future outcomes. Figures reflect total transaction or facility value, not fees or CBR participation. Transactions listed include mandates executed by CBR's principals in prior professional capacities and before the formation of the firm. All financing is provided by third-party institutions on their own terms and subject to their own underwriting and approval.
The team
Founder, President & Chief Executive Officer
Carlos Lluna has spent more than four decades structuring international financing and carrying complex transactions from concept through to financial close, across Europe, Latin America and North America.
He is a specialist in buyer credits under the OECD Arrangement and has structured transactions across the principal export credit agency frameworks: EXIM Bank (United States), CESCE (Spain), SACE (Italy), Ducroire/Delcredere in Belgium — since rebranded Credendo — COFACE, which held the French State export guarantee mandate until Bpifrance Assurance Export assumed it in 2017, and Hermes cover, the German Federal Government scheme administered by Euler Hermes. He has worked alongside multilateral institutions including the Inter-American Development Bank and the European Investment Bank. Facilities structured or advised on over his career exceed USD 2.5 billion in aggregate value.
The centre of his practice is sovereign and government-financed programmes. He has structured a USD 560 million buyer credit line for the industrial transport sector, a USD 320 million credit line agreed directly with a Ministry of Finance, and an ECA-backed facility of USD 135 million for a national agricultural development fund. He has advised the Presidency of the Republic of Ecuador, the Spanish Treasury, the United States Department of State, and ministries of tourism, agriculture, energy and finance in Cuba, Peru, Venezuela and El Salvador.
On the corporate side he has advised tier-one Spanish industrial and engineering multinationals on their Latin American operations, across electrical infrastructure, offshore construction, industrial engineering, power generation and turnkey export contracting. He has also worked with a leading international water and infrastructure group on the development of a USD 280 million programme to transform the energy matrix of Ecuador's shrimp sector across 235,000 hectares. He founded and chaired an international group specialising in foreign trade, international investment and the financial structuring of public and private projects in energy, oil and gas, environment and EPC engineering; as Director General he ran eight companies across Italy, Spain, Peru, Cuba and the United States, with 900 employees and USD 670 million in turnover.
He chaired Latin American Business Reports, the only company authorised by the United States Department of State to produce strategic socio-economic analysis on Cuba, and was an organising partner of The State of the World Forum in San Francisco. His 1993 analysis of the dollarisation of the Cuban economy was published in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post and entered into the record of the United States Congress.
Executive Vice-President
Gustavo Pérez has more than twenty years of experience structuring real estate financing and connecting projects with specialised capital.
He has advised developers, landowners and sponsors on bespoke financing for commercial and residential projects, coordinating structures with institutional funds, banks and private lenders across Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Lithuania. His recent transaction record spans residential and commercial developments on the Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca, a multi-unit residential building in Miami, and a €21m healthcare asset.
He holds an MBA from Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, with a foundation in finance and cost accounting, complemented by specialised training in real estate financial modelling. That combination allows him to assess economic viability, optimise cash flow structures, and translate complex scenarios into clear, lender-ready models for investors and credit committees.
Project Manager
Guillermo Lluna is an industrial engineer and valuation specialist with more than twenty-five years across industrial engineering, real estate and asset valuation, and international project development.
He spent over a decade as a technical valuation specialist at Sociedad de Tasación in Madrid, preparing valuation certificates, market studies and expert reports on industrial buildings, commercial premises and offices, and on machinery, plant and going concerns, for private companies and banking institutions. Reading an asset the way a lender's committee reads it is the discipline he brings to CBR's real estate mandates.
He has led commercial and management operations for an international group across Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia and Morocco, working with ministries of industry, tourism, energy and health, and has been responsible for securing domestic and international financing for civil works in Canada, Ecuador and Venezuela. In Spain he ran sales, administration and procurement for the group, restructuring the function and reducing fixed costs by half.
More recently he has worked on land and residential acquisition, works supervision and development on the Costa del Sol. At CBR he manages the implementation of a new construction system in Spain, project financing in the residential and commercial development market, and the establishment of the associated manufacturing facility.
R&D Manager
Eva Vázquez is a biologist and aquaculture specialist with more than fifteen years in industrial-scale marine production, recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) and applied research and development.
She leads production and R&D for the industrial grow-out of greater amberjack (Seriola dumerili) in recirculating systems — covering the design, dimensioning and equipping of industrial RAS installations, hatchery and nursery development, and the preparation and management of authorisations, public funding applications and financing instruments.
Her earlier work spans CTAQUA, where she led hatchery, nursery and species diversification programmes and directed a CDTI-funded research project on common octopus culture in RAS; AquabioTech Group in Malta; production management for molluscs and crustaceans at EMSUR; intensive production of meagre and gilthead seabream; and technical work in Denmark on Seriola lalandi broodstock. She began her career on the Iberian lynx captive breeding programme at Doñana National Park.
For CBR she provides the technical assessment that sits underneath aquaculture and agro-industrial financing: whether a production system will perform as modelled, what the biological and operational risks actually are, and what a credit committee should be asking about them.
Contact
Tell us what you are building and how it is currently capitalised. We will respond within two business days with an initial view on financeability and the likely structure. All enquiries are treated as confidential, and we are happy to execute an NDA before receiving any project documentation.
All discussion and documentation is handled under a bilateral non-disclosure agreement, executed before any preliminary structure review.
Enquiries are evaluated by a principal. There are no junior intermediaries and no external brokers between you and the person who will negotiate.
A preliminary view on credit feasibility and structural viability is returned within two business days, including when the answer is no.
Eligible counterparties. CBR advises corporates, project sponsors, developers, professional and institutional investors, sovereign and public entities, and multilateral development finance institutions. We do not advise consumers or retail clients, and we do not arrange regulated consumer or residential mortgage credit.
Legal notice
Owner of this website. CBR BUSINESS RESEARCH & MANAGEMENT, SOCIEDAD LIMITADA UNIPERSONAL (S.L.U.) · NIF B26649590 · Registered office: Calle Róbalo 28, Polígono Industrial Tres Caminos, 11510 Puerto Real (Cádiz), Spain · Office: Calle Estébanez Calderón 6, 29602 Marbella (Málaga), Spain · Incorporated by deed granted on 23 January 2026 before Ignacio José Padial Gómez-Torrente, Notary of San Fernando (Cádiz), protocol number 213 · Registro Mercantil de Cádiz, sheet CA-68464 · Contact: carlos.lluna@cbr.com.es
Nature of the service. CBR is an advisory firm. CBR does not lend, does not provide credit, does not hold client funds, and does not provide investment advice. Activities regulated by the Spanish Securities Market Act are expressly excluded from the company's corporate purpose under its articles of association. CBR does not act as a credit intermediary for residential mortgage credit granted to consumers within the meaning of Ley 5/2019, de 15 de marzo, reguladora de los contratos de crédito inmobiliario. All financing is provided by third-party institutions on their own terms, subject to their own underwriting and approval.
Eligible counterparties. CBR is not a licensed credit institution, a deposit-taking bank, an investment firm, a broker-dealer or an underwriter. Advisory services are directed exclusively at corporates, project sponsors, professional and institutional investors, public entities and multilateral institutions, and are not directed at consumers or retail clients.
Mandate standards. Mandates are run against the OECD Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits, the environmental and social standards applied by each participating institution, and standard Loan Market Association documentation. CBR applies know-your-client and anti-money-laundering procedures before accepting any engagement.
No offer. Nothing on this website constitutes an offer of finance, an invitation to invest, a solicitation, or a recommendation of any financial instrument. Content is provided for general information only and does not take account of any recipient's particular circumstances.
Track record. Transactions described on this website include mandates executed by CBR's principals in prior professional capacities and before the formation of the company on 23 January 2026. Past transactions are not indicative of future outcomes.
Data protection. Personal data submitted through this website is processed by CBR Business Research & Management, S.L.U. as controller, under Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) and Ley Orgánica 3/2018, for the sole purpose of responding to the enquiry. The legal basis is the data subject's consent. Data is retained only for as long as necessary for that purpose and is not transferred to third parties except where required by law. Data subjects may exercise their rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection by writing to the registered office or to the contact address above, and may lodge a complaint with the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos.
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