Can a surety cover joint ventures as well single engagements?
Joint ventures can be covered as can projects that span international borders. Some of the facilities or programs Allianz Trade puts in place can be large – perhaps too large for one surety company to have on its individual balance. So, in that case we get together with other surety companies or banks and establish a co-surety relationship, each taking a percentage of the bonds issued under that account. That’s especially the case with large infrastructure projects, where one contractor doesn't have the breadth of capabilities to do all the work. So, you might have a railway contractor, a rail car contractor and a tunnelling expert partnering to bid for an entire rail system. We might be involved in a surety relationship with one or more of those parties or as a co-surety. And that complexity is also compounded by international elements. A US contractor might be partnering with an international contractor to go after a specialty type project. And in that instance, we can find ourselves being the surety for the US contractor and perhaps one of our other branches in another country being the surety for the international contractor. Given our global footprint and legal and underwriting expertise, we tend to be involved in many different aspects of joint-venture projects.