Four Ways to Fund Your Project
Each one solves a different problem. All rest on the same principle: risk belongs with the parties best equipped to carry it, not with the sponsor.
Each one solves a different problem. All rest on the same principle: risk belongs with the parties best equipped to carry it, not with the sponsor.
Conventional lenders want 25–40% of the project in equity before they will commit. They price margin at 5–8% over base to cover risks they cannot assess with any precision. They expect you to arrange your own cover, typically 3–6% of project value each year, and to hire derivatives specialists and run collateral accounts alongside it. Having asked for all of that, they may still decline a project in an unfamiliar market, using new technology, or from a sponsor without a track record in that jurisdiction.
None of this means your project is risky. It means the conventional market has no efficient way to hold the risk, so it hands the whole burden back to you and prices for the worst case it can imagine.
We are not brokers and we do not place mandates into the market. Leveraged & Equity Investment Partners is the mandated structuring consultant to Leveraged & Equity Global Capital. We design the capital architecture, Leveraged & Equity Risk Mitigation transfers the risks that make it work, and L&EGC provides the capital. One mandate, one term sheet, one counterparty — and the four structures below are how we build it.
Up to 85% less cash committed at the outset, and a cost of borrowing up to 40% below conventional bank terms.
The equity cheque is the point at which most good projects fail. A sponsor with a sound scheme is asked to find a quarter or more of the total cost in cash, at the exact moment that capital is hardest to raise and most expensive to give away. The margin quoted on the debt then reflects uncertainty the lender cannot resolve rather than risk the project actually carries, and the return left for the sponsor no longer justifies the effort.
We rebuild the capital structure so the risks driving that pricing are held by specialist counterparties instead of sitting unaddressed in the sponsor's equity. Once they are placed, the same project supports a fundamentally different structure.
Projects of $50 million and above across infrastructure, renewable energy, real estate, technology and emerging markets — particularly schemes with sound fundamentals that the conventional market will fund only on terms that destroy the return.
Discuss an integrated capital structureWhen prices fall through the floor, your financing cost falls with them — automatically, without a hedging programme.
Whether the revenue comes from freight rates, commodity prices, room rates or power sold at market, the exposure is identical: fixed financing costs sitting on top of a variable income line. Conventional hedging answers this with lengthy documentation, continuous collateral management and specialist advisers on retainer — expensive enough that most projects quietly decide to carry the risk instead and hope the cycle is kind.
The cost of your financing is linked directly to the price of what you sell. If prices fall below an agreed floor, the rate you pay reduces automatically and offsets the lost revenue. If prices rise, the capital shares in the upside. The result is a genuine alignment of interest rather than a lender insulated from every outcome but your failure.
Any sector with transparent market pricing and long-dated debt — shipping, mining and aviation, hospitality, commercial property, agriculture, infrastructure and merchant power. Wherever price moves and the debt does not.
Discuss price protection for a projectA guaranteed floor beneath 90% of forecast earnings, underwritten by A-rated counterparties for up to twenty years.
A project can be economically sound and still be treated as speculative. Without an investment-grade profile, the consequences follow in sequence: a higher cost of debt, covenants that leave no operating margin for error, and equity investors demanding 15% or more because nothing protects them if the forecast slips. The project has not changed. Only its perceived credit quality has, and that perception is what makes it unfundable.
A structural guarantee from A-rated counterparties establishes a contractual floor beneath project earnings. This is not an insurance policy bolted alongside the financing — it changes what the project is, from the perspective of everyone pricing it.
The effect on the numbers is immediate. Projects move from speculative to investment-grade treatment, the weighted average cost of capital falls by 100–400 basis points, and equity return expectations drop from 15% and above into single figures. Volatility is replaced by a cash flow you can plan around.
Projects of $50 million and above with sound fundamentals that cannot reach an investment-grade structure by conventional means — the single most common position among the sponsors who approach us.
Discuss an earnings floor for a projectThe entire project funded as equity. No loan, no interest, no covenants — and you keep control.
Conventional project finance asks a great deal of a sponsor before it delivers anything: find 25–40% in cash, take substantial debt onto the balance sheet, accept exposure to rate movements for the life of the facility, operate within covenants drafted for the lender's comfort, and carry personal or corporate recourse if the plan slips. For many sponsors that price is simply too high, whatever the project's merits.
RISE inverts the arrangement entirely. It is our premium structure, and the furthest departure from conventional project finance we offer.
Sponsors who want the project built without the exposure that conventional debt demands — where balance sheet capacity is limited, where covenants would constrain the business, or where the equity simply is not there to raise.
Discuss pure equity fundingMost projects do not need all four. The right structure depends on where your particular scheme is being penalised — the equity requirement, the price exposure, the credit profile, or the debt itself. Tell us which it is and we will tell you which of these applies, and whether it will make a material difference. If it will not, we will say so.
The structures and outcomes described on this page are indicative and are provided for general information. Equity levels, pricing, coverage, terms and counterparties are determined case by case, following project assessment, counterparty confirmation and completion of documentation, and will vary according to the characteristics of each project. Figures shown reflect outcomes achieved on particular transactions and should not be read as a forecast or a representation of the terms available on any other project. Nothing on this page constitutes an offer, an invitation, or a commitment to provide finance.