Herbert Smith Freehills has advised Hessische Landesbahn (HLB) on a real estate financing provided by KfW IPEX-Bank. The funds in the amount of €70 million are to be used for the construction of a maintenance facility in the Land of Hesse. HLB will issue fixed-interest registered bonds (Namensschuldverschreibungen).

The owner of the maintenance facility is Hessische Landesbahn GmbH, the parent company of the HLB group. HLB leases the maintenance facility with eight tracks of 55 meters each distributed over four bays with an operations building and warehouse to a subsidiary GmbH specifically established for this purpose, which provides maintenance services for HLB as well as potentially for other rail transport companies. In The already completed purchase of the 72,200 square meters of property, the equipment for the workshop and the track systems for connection to the existing rail network will also be financed.

HLB is a regional transport company; the owner is the Land of Hesse. In addition to transport services in local public transport (ÖPNV), HLB also operates rail freight transport. For this purpose, it uses its own workshops for the maintenance of rail vehicles, buses and its own railway infrastructure.

The Herbert Smith Freehills team advising HLB was led by counsel Hannes Jacobi (Finance) and included partners Stefanie Herkert (Finance) and Dr Steffen Hörner (Tax), as well as associate Tatiana Günster (Tax).