For those Bourbon St. bound this month, pages 12-14 offer a wrap of some of the new projects Canadian companies will be shopping at NATPE in New Orleans Jan. 25 to 28.

Versions of these stories also appear in the Winter 1999 issue Playback International.

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SODEC president Pierre Lampron is attending NATPE in New Orleans for meetings with U.S. industry banking and syndication representatives. Lampron is looking to close negotiations with a U.S. associate active in the gap financing and syndication sectors for SODEC-Financier, a mixed-capital investment and lending agency for certified Quebec cultural products.

In the audiovisual sector, SODEC-Financiere will invest in certified Quebec cultural projects including film, television and multimedia production in the form of gap financing, investments in larger commercial projects and rights acquisitions. It is yet to be determined whether the new agency will act as an insurer for other gap financiers. No content restrictions will be attached to investments, says Lampron.

The initial capitalization for the new agency is expected to be over $45 million.

This month, Lampron is slated to hold talks with investors in London, the U.K. and Paris, with other meetings planned for Los Angeles and New York.

Institutions taking part in the talks are believed to include Bank of America and Bank of California (Imperial Bank), a noted gap financier in the U.S., as well as Barclay’s and others in the U.K. One of the agency’s current advisors is a former executive with London-based risk insurer Screen Partners.

On the role of the agency’s foreign ‘correspondents’ or associates, Lampron says the idea is to exchange and verify a range of business information, including program financing and sales potential.