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- ExplainerInfrastructure
What financial close means on an infrastructure project
Financial close is a single date on which every financing document signs and the lenders' money becomes a binding commitment. By the end you will know what has to be true on that day, how it differs from the announcements that come before it, and why it is the only one worth believing.
- ExplainerInfrastructure
What a completion guarantee covers and when it falls away
Between financial close and the day a plant works, a project has debt and no revenue. A completion guarantee is the sponsor's promise to stand in that gap. By the end you will know what triggers its release, what it absorbs while it lasts, and why the release date is negotiated harder than the amount.
- ExplainerDevelopment Finance
How a sovereign wealth fund differs from a reserve fund
Both are pools of public money held outside the spending accounts, and the names are used interchangeably. By the end of this you will know the three rules that separate them, why a resource levy so often produces one, and why a central bank's reserves are a third thing again.
- ExplainerIndustrial Policy
What a production subsidy actually buys
Governments underwrite factories in two different ways: by paying toward the building, or by paying for each unit the finished plant makes. By the end you will know which instrument a programme is using, and what each one can and cannot change.
- ExplainerInfrastructure
What a revenue pledge is and what it does not promise
A revenue pledge hands bondholders one named stream of money and shuts them out of everything else. By the end you will know the order the money leaves the account, the covenant that keeps the stream large enough, and the risks the pledge quietly leaves with the public.
- ExplainerDevelopment Finance
What makes a loan concessional
Concessional finance is lending on terms better than the market would offer, measured by a calculation called the grant element. By the end you should know which four terms make a loan concessional, who absorbs the cost, and why the same loan can be scored two different ways.
- ExplainerDevelopment Finance
What a development finance institution does with public money
Development finance institutions lend, insure and buy stakes in private businesses abroad using capital they are expected to get back. By the end you should be able to tell which instrument an announcement is describing, and what the private market would have done without it.
- ExplainerDevelopment Finance
What a municipal bond pays for and who repays it
A municipal bond is a loan from investors to a government. By the end you will know what the money is allowed to buy, which pocket the repayment comes out of, and why two bonds sold by the same city in the same week can rest on completely different promises.
- ExplainerDevelopment Finance
What an offtake agreement does
An offtake agreement is a promise to buy something that has not been made yet. By the end you will know what it changes for a lender, what it costs the seller, and what it leaves unsolved.
- ExplainerInfrastructure
What an availability payment is and what it buys
In an availability-payment concession a government pays a private partner a fixed sum for keeping an asset open and working, whether or not anybody uses it. By the end you will know who carries demand risk, what the payment covers in the decades after construction ends, and the one clause that gives the public any leverage.