DALLAS — Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has joined international infrastructure investment firm Meridiam as senior advisor to Meridiam North America.
LaHood, a seven-term Republican congressman from Illinois, served as the 16th Secretary of Transportation from January 2009 to July 2013.
He is currently a co-chair of Building America’s Future, a transportation infrastructure advocacy group. Other co-chairs of the bipartisan group of elected officials include former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“We are honored Secretary LaHood has decided to join Meridiam,” said chief executive officer and Meridiam founder Thierry Deau. “His broad experience in transportation and infrastructure in the United States will be a valuable asset to the company.”
With offices in Paris, New York, Toronto, and Istanbul, Meridiam is a leading investor in public infrastructure with $3.5 billion of assets. The firm has to date invested in 32 infrastructure projects in Europe and North America.
A Meridiam unit is part of the four consortiums bidding for the Illinois portion of the $1.5 Illiana Corridor, a 47-mile east-west toll way that would link I-55 in Illinois to I-65 in Indiana. The project would be the first transportation public-private partnership in Illinois.
Meridiam is also on the short list for the Indiana portion of the P3 project.
The Maryland Transit Authority in January selected an international consortium that includes Meridiam as one of the four groups on the short list for its $2.2 billion Purple Line light-rail project being developed as a P3 project.
