Infrastructure Financing

Project finance is the long term financing of infrastructure and industrial projects based upon the projected cash flows of the project rather than the balance sheets of the project sponsors. Usually, a project financing structure involves a number of equity investors, known as sponsors, as well as a syndicate of banks that provide loans to the operation. The loans are most commonly non-recourse loans, which are secured by the project assets and paid entirely from project cash flow, rather than from the general assets or creditworthiness of the project sponsors, a decision in part supported by financial modeling. The financing is typically secured by all of the project assets, including the revenue-producing contracts. Project lenders are given a lien on all of these assets, and are able to assume control of a project if the project company has difficulties complying with the loan terms.
Generally, a special purpose entity is created for each project, thereby shielding other assets owned by a project sponsor from the detrimental effects of a project failure. As a special purpose entity, the project company has no assets other than the project. Capital contribution commitments by the owners of the project company are sometimes necessary to ensure that the project is financially sound. Project finance is often more complicated than alternative financing methods. Traditionally, project financing has been most commonly used in the mining, transportation, telecommunication and public utility industries. More recently, particularly in Europe, project financing principles have been applied to public infrastructure under public–private partnerships (PPP) or, in the UK, Private Finance Initiative (PFI) transactions.
Risk identification and allocation is a key component of project finance. A project may be subject to a number of technical, environmental, economic and political risks, particularly in developing countries and emerging markets. Financial institutions and project sponsors may conclude that the risks inherent in project development and operation are unacceptable (unfinanceable). To cope with these risks, project sponsors in these industries (such as power plants or railway lines) are generally completed by a number of specialist companies operating in a contractual network with each other that allocates risk in a way that allows financing to take place. The various patterns of implementation are sometimes referred to as "project delivery methods." The financing of these projects must also be distributed among multiple parties, so as to distribute the risk associated with the project while simultaneously ensuring profits for each party involved.
A riskier or more expensive project may require limited recourse financing secured by a surety from sponsors. A complex project finance structure may incorporate corporate finance, securitization, options, insurance provisions or other types of collateral enhancement to mitigate unallocated risk.
Project finance shares many characteristics with maritime finance and aircraft finance; however, the latter two are more specialized fields.

Marketing

Inexpensive business development

Inexpensive business development

Social media marketing is a recent component of organizations' integrated marketing communications plans. Integrated marketing communications is a principle organizations follow to connect with their targeted markets. Integrated marketing communications coordinates the elements of the promotional mix—advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion—to produce a customer focused message. In the traditional marketing communications model, the content, frequency, timing, and medium of communications by the organization is in collaboration with an external agent, i.e. advertising agencies, marketing research firms, and public relations firms. However, the growth of social media has impacted the way organizations communicate with their customers. In the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet provides a set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online.

Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention, generates online conversations, and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. The message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.

Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access, opening doors for organizations to increase their brand awareness and facilitate conversations with the customer. Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for organizations to implement marketing campaigns. Organizations can receive direct feedback from their customers and targeted markets.

Projects Financing

Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) is a form of project financing, wherein a private entity receives a concession from the private or public sector to finance, design, construct, and operate a facility stated in the concession contract. This enables the project proponent to recover its investment, operating and maintenance expenses in the project.
Due to the long-term nature of the arrangement, the fees are usually raised during the concession period. The rate of increase is often tied to a combination of internal and external variables, allowing the proponent to reach a satisfactory internal rate of return for its investment.
Examples of countries using BOT are India, Croatia, Japan, China, Malaysia and Philippines. However, in some countries, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the term used is Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT). Recently, in the United States, BOT strategies are being considered for construction of portions of Interstate 69, with groundbreaking on the Southern Indiana Toll Road segment expected to begin in 2008.
Traditionally, such projects provide for the infrastructure to be transferred to the government at the end of the concession period. (In Australia, primarily for reasons related to the borrowing powers of states, the transfer obligation is omitted).
BOT is a type of project financing. The hallmarks of project financing are:
(i) The lenders to the project look primarily at the earnings of the project as the source from which loan repayments will be made. Their credit assessment is based on the project, not on the creditworthiness of the borrowing entity.
(ii) The security taken by the lenders is largely confined to the project assets. As such, project financing is often referred to as "limited recourse" financing because lenders are given only a limited recourse against the borrower.
Most project finance structures are complex. The risks in the project are spread between the various parties; each risk is usually assumed by the party which can most efficiently and cost-effectively control or handle it.
Once the project's risks are identified, the likelihood of their occurrence assessed and their impact on the project determined, the sponsor must allocate those risks. Briefly, its options are to absorb the risk, lay off the risk with third parties, such as insurers, or allocate the risk among contractors and lenders. The sponsor will be acting, more often than not, on behalf of a sponsor at a time when the equity participants are unknown. Nevertheless, each of the participants in the project must be satisfied with the risk allocation, the creditworthiness of the risk taker and the reward that flows to the party taking the risk. In this respect, each party takes a quasi-equity risk in the project.