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Tony Gordon today resigned as head of Stamford, Conn.-based AIG Energy. Gordon, who was previously a managing director at Goldman Sachs in London, joined AIG last fall to lead a push into origination and asset acquisitions in the energy market (PFR, 9/25). Gordon did not immediately respond to messages on his U.S. and U.K. cell phones. Calls to AIG in Stamford were referred to the firm's general counsel, Andy Kaplan, who did not immediately return calls.

Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Cos has boosted the size of a planned institutional term loan, which will partly pay down a Berkshire Hathaway-led facility, from $400 million to $500 million. Lenders tracking the deal note that the upsizing is a characteristic of the B loan market, which tends to be more market driven and so initial syndication targets are more fluid than for pure bank tranches. The $400 million loan was launched two weeks ago (PFR, 5/19) as part of a plan to fund the $1.174 billion needed to pay off a $900 million facility set up by Berkshire and Lehman Brothers last year.

Banks have piled into the syndication of Dominion's ground breaking $1.25 billion loan package, which is the first widely syndicated power facility to incorporate pricing referenced against the performance of the borrower's bonds. One syndicate official says the deal is strongly oversubscribed and allocations will be pared back ahead of the close of the loan Wednesday. Syndicators are waiting on a handful of banks to wrap documentation before taking a knife to allocations, he adds.

Europe

Lenders to AES DRAX, a 4 GW merchant coal-fired plant in north England, are looking to extend a standstill agreement, which temporarily freezes debt servicing payments, that expires at the end of the month. A banker who attended a DRAX restructuring meeting last Tuesday, says the aim is to extend the standstill for three to six months and give the various counterparties involved in DRAX more time to work out a restructuring.

Oklahoma Gas & Electric's recent agreement to purchase NRG's majority stake in the 500 MW McClain merchant power plant in Oklahoma offers few clues to pricing in the secondary market because the deal is effectively a one-off, according to officials shopping for assets. While the acquisition price was not disclosed, OG&E Electric Services says it plans submit a detailed proposal to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission in June to change OG&E's rates to "enable the company to recover the cost of a new power plant," according to a press release. OG&E's ability to get the plant into its rate base was a major driver of the deal, says the head of power generation at a major U.S. company. "OG&E is not going to buy a whole [shed] load of power plants," he adds.

ICAP has shut its weather and environmental derivatives desk in London because the two markets failed to take off. ICAP's desk had three staffers: head of the desk, Clive Murray, weather broker Katleen de Cock and environmental products broker James Emanuel. One official said the weather derivatives industry has almost vanished, with only a couple of trades being executed a week.

AES and its three mandated lead arrangers ABN AMRO, Credit Agricole Indosuez and Société Générale have flexed the terms of its roughly EUR500 million non-recourse project loan funding the development of a 1.2 GW gas-fired power project in Spain, known as Cartagena.

CenterPoint Energy recently tapped the convertibles market with a $500 million, 3.75% issue and will use the proceeds to pay down a portion of a $3.8 billion loan facility which was extended in February. Scott Taylor, analyst with Standard & Poor's in New York, says the pricing reflects the better funding rates the company has been able to achieve in deals since the loan was refinanced (PFR, 3/31). "There's no doubt the market is favorable," he notes. Leticia Lowe, spokeswoman at CenterPoint, declined comment.

Dresdner Bank has unloaded its roughly GBP15 million non-recourse senior loan position in AES DRAX, Europe's largest power plant, as part of a EUR511 million loan portfolio auction won by Deutsche Bank. The sale also saw Deutsche acquire Dresdner's stake in Tejo Energia, a non-recourse loan backing a 600 MW Portuguese power plant owned by International Power and Endesa, and more than a dozen other transatlantic power transactions, according to market watchers. A Deutsche Bank spokesman declined comment.