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Project Finance might just be the longest-running, most-requested topic that we still haven’t covered even after 5+ years of writing about different types of finance firms.
But that ends today.
There’s a ton of confusion over what you actually do in Project Finance, how it’s different from private equity / Leveraged Finance / Debt Capital Markets / Public Finance, and what the advancement opportunities look like.
So we’re going to tackle all of those one-by-one in this interview with a reader who moved into Project Finance from M&A:
Projecting Your Way Into Project Finance
Q: So, how’d you get started in Project Finance?
A: I started out in M&A, and worked there for almost 2 years before deciding to explore other areas of finance.
At that point, I was interviewing around for buy-side roles and a recruiter approached me with a Project Finance role.
Originally, I was mostly interested in corporate development and private equity, but I decided to check it out anyway and see if I would like it.
I always had a curiosity around debt products, and was intrigued by what I found out during interviews about the day-to-day activities in Project Finance roles.
I made it through multiple rounds of interviews, and I’ve been here ever since.
My story is unusual because most people do NOT go from M&A to PF – it’s much more common to move in from something like Leveraged Finance.
Q: OK, great. So what do you do in Project Finance?
And how is it different from investment banking, infrastructure investing, public finance, and anything else with “infrastructure,” “project,” or “finance” in its name?
A: In Project Finance, you advise clients and/or lend funds for the debt used in infrastructure investments.
There are 2 main work streams: advisory and lending.
In the first case, the bank or Project Finance Group acts in an advisory capacity to the client.
So the client would engage the bank at an earlier stage of the deal, and would consult with the bank on the optimal structure to achieve their funding goals.
From the client’s perspective, the ideal situation would be maximized debt load, maximized debt tenors, a quick financial close, and low debt pricing.
Each debt funding source or structure results in a trade-off between these criteria, and it comes down to prioritizing which elements are most important for the client.
Work during this stage involves intensive modeling, running various scenarios, and developing marketing materials such as the information memorandum.
Once the deal structure is determined, you would then tap into the banking market and work with other banks to raise the required financing for the project.
This brings us to the second work stream in project finance – lending.
In this role, you serve as the lender for infrastructure investment deals. Most of the time, this starts when you receive an “information pack” from an advisory bank.
If your bank acts as the advisor to a client, more often than not, you would be “required” to participate in or even lead the lending, meaning your bank would aim to be the biggest lender in the deal. This promotes the deal and sends positive signals in the market.
And then your job as an advisor is to round up other, smaller lenders – and to send them information packs, gauge their interest, and get everyone to contribute enough funding to move forward with the deal.
The lending role is the same role that large banks play in leveraged buyouts when raising debt for the private equity firms, except we work with investments in infrastructure assets instead of normal companies.
“Clients” (any firms that invest in infrastructure) generally come to us in the later stages of a deal, ask us to look at the numbers, and then propose a debt package to fund the deal.
So an infrastructure fund might say:
“Hey, we’re going to build this power plant for $1 billion USD. Here’s what its financial profile looks like, here are its key contracts and revenue streams, and here’s the market research we’ve done. What kind of loan can you offer?”
Overall, the lending role is still more similar to buy-side roles than it is to sell-side investment banking jobs because you’re investing your own funds.
While you need to manage clients and the advisory bank on the commercial front, you also need to dedicate a good amount of time to build a business case and present the deal to your bank’s internal credit committee (just like how you would present a deal to the investment committee in a private equity fund).
The main difference is that as a lender, we focus heavily on the downside risk of deals, as the key objectives are capital preservation and covering the debt service.
Q: OK, thanks for writing a book to answer that one.
So how would you summarize the differences vs. those other fields I mentioned?
A: The main differences:
- Investment Banking: Unlike in IB, we invest our own money and we win or lose based on how the infrastructure investments perform.
- Infrastructure Investing: They focus on the equity funding of investments, and we focus on the debt funding. Infrastructure Investing:Project Finance::Private Equity:Large Bank Lenders (no, it’s not a perfect analogy, but that is the basic difference).
- Public Finance: We only work with privately funded assets, so we do not raise capital for federal/state/local governments.
- Leveraged Finance and Debt Capital Markets: We only invest in infrastructure asset deals, not in acquisitions of entire companies; we also do not supply funding for every day, ongoing corporate use (i.e. as in DCM).
Also, “project financing” is usually raised by clients through special purpose vehicles with limited or no recourse to the client – which means that if a deal turns bad, we would only be able to gain title over the assets in the special purpose vehicle.
This is very different from corporate debt, which gives you rights to the operating company itself (i.e. you have first claim to the company’s assets, above the equity investors).
This is why rigorous technical / legal / financial due diligence is imperative, and why it’s so important to balance debt maximization and risk management.
Anything else?
Project Finance Jobs: Storage Assets, Senior Debt, and SPVs
Q: Great. So let’s continue with this theme: how do you think about deals?
What are the key factors and metrics to look at?
A: The focus in Project Finance is 100% on debt.
From a pure lending perspective, the equity IRRs are not important to us, and we care mostly about the constraints on the debt and the downside risk of the deal.
Having said that, in an advisory role, we are always mindful of the clients’ focus on project IRRs – and within the debt constraints, we aim for solutions that benefit lenders and also potentially boost clients’ IRRs.
The first question we always ask is: If this project sinks, how much could we sell it for? Could we recover any of our funds? If so, how much?
For example, let’s say it’s a $200 million asset and we’re lending $150 million to fund its purchase.
We might estimate how much we could get for assets that are sold off in future years, and then see if we could recover part or all of that $150 million initial investment.
With many of these assets, there’s price risk (spot rates might decrease) and volume risk (customers might leave).
But if it’s something like a power plant with all government contracts, both those risks are reduced and may be almost negligible depending on the contract structure.
With an asset such as a storage terminal, though, there’s market risk involved .
For example, if the clients contracted on an annual basis do not renew their contracts and the investment fund is holding the asset for 5-10 years, this could result in gap periods where storage capacity is not contracted but debt payments are due – or if capacity is re-contracted at lower rates, debt service ratios might be strained.
So we spend a lot of time digging into those details and evaluating the quality of customers, contracts, the underlying market dynamics, the average length of contracts, and more, and evaluating how much risk there is in a true downside scenario.
Since we mostly lend senior debt, we’re never going to “make a killing” on these projects – interest rates are relatively low and there’s no equity option built in, which is why most of the analytical work is designed to better assess the downside risks.
Furthermore, the downside scenarios above are rarely a matter of writing off an asset.
Often, there are contract clauses built in around termination payments to the clients or asset purchase options by the clients of your client, and you would need to go through various contracts to fully understand and model out these scenarios.
Q: Moving into more granular details, what’s a typical day in your life like?
A: The hours are definitely better than in M&A; 60 hours per week is the average here, though that fluctuates depending on deal activity.
On a typical day, I start reading emails before I arrive at work so I can figure out how my day will play out.
The main difference here (although this is a broad generalization) is that each work stream takes more time to complete.
For example, let’s say that you’re evaluating a storage asset with 100 contracts.
If you’re working in banking and your MD needs to see the analysis ASAP, you might just assume simple percentage growth rates in the model.
Here, we would actually model out the revenue from each contract separately over many years into the future, which can take a very long time.
So on a live deal, it’s pretty much impossible to do a “quick and dirty model” – they take more time to complete because of the level of detail.
In between this technical work, I’ll assist with due diligence, review debt terms and incoming deals, and also speak with other banks if we’re acting as the advisor on the deal.
I also spend time reviewing government policies and issues like tax credits for projects – sometimes governments promote infrastructure investing via tax benefits or by guaranteeing debt. So those factors are also important to understand.
If there are a fair number of ongoing deals, I’ll split my time equally between those 3 tasks (modeling, coordinating with other lenders, and doing market research).
The Project Finance… Financing Process
Q: I see. Can you walk us through what happens in a typical deal process in Project Finance?
A: Sure. I’ll walk through this under the assumption that you’re acting as the advisor:
Step 1: We get an “information pack” from the infrastructure investment fund, including the financial model, market information, and so on, and they ask us if we want to participate.
After understanding the deal, we would seek to gauge our credit committee’s appetite for the deal.
We compare the deal to previous deals completed by our group from every angle – financial robustness, familiarity with the clients, track record of the client in operating and managing such projects, location of the project and underlying market dynamics, etc.
We also spend a lot of time looking at the security structure of the deal, and specifically how special purpose vehicles (SPVs) are being used.
The purpose of the SPVs is to create separation between the parent company and the rest of the asset, and to assign different elements to different parties.
For example, the customer contracts might reside with the parent company even if the asset goes bust, so we, as the lenders, might only be able to claim the title to that asset.
While SPVs can “reduce risk” from the client’s perspective, from our perspective they’ve merely reallocated risk to us.
And so we need to thoroughly assess the impact of the proposed structures. Many SPVs are tax-related as well, so we need to factor in the tax impact on cash flows in our own models.
All this is carried out through dialogues with clients – for example, if the security structure is too weak for the appetite of most banks, we would highlight such features to the client.
Q: We’re only on Step 1.
That already sounds like quite a lot of work.
A: Oh, it gets better. So let’s say that we’ve reviewed the initial information and we decide that we want to do the deal – here’s what happens next:
Step 2: We build our own model for the same deal at this stage, and we start calling on other Project Finance teams and groups to see who else might want to participate.
The more groups there are, the more cumbersome the process because each one wants slightly different terms.
So we try to optimize for what the client wants and shortlist the initial pool of banks to something more manageable.
Step 3: Then, we figure out the appropriate amount of debt to use and the terms of the debt.
On most deals, we lend primarily senior debt with interest rates between 2% and 10%, though that varies by region, asset type, and economic conditions.
Sometimes multiple tranches of debt are used, and each one has a different purpose.
For example, let’s say that a storage facility has both international customers and domestic customers with different contract terms for each customer type.
If there are also domestic lenders and international lenders, we might create 2 different tranches of debt: international and domestic.
And then we ensure that cash flows from international customers pay for the international tranche of debt, and the same for the domestic side.
This is another reason why modeling gets more complex in Project Finance – you don’t see this same mechanic of different revenue streams supporting different debt tranches in (most) private equity deals.
Q: I’m intrigued. Keep going, please.
A: You bet.
Step 4: Once we’ve built our own model and narrowed down the list of other lenders that want to participate, we spend a lot of time negotiating the debt terms with them.
Even if there are only 5-6 other groups involved, this always takes a long time because everyone wants something different and some banks are more difficult than others.
On the other hand, the upside here is that a lot of interesting conversations take place – because banks consider project issues from different perspectives, and sometimes new issues come to light.
Step 5: Then, once we’ve finalized the debt terms, each bank or PF firm goes back to its credit committee to win approval for the deal.
This period lasts a few weeks, and the client waits around while the banks all get internal approval to fund the deal.
Step 6: Finally, once we hear back from everyone, we go back to the equity investor(s) in the deal and start the process of drafting loan documents. By this point, the client has agreed to the debt terms in advance; it’s very, very difficult to change those terms at this stage.
Technically, we’ve already found and highlighted the key terms required to protect us in the “downside cases” in Step 5…
But certain details may not have already been accounted for – and so a fair amount of negotiation still takes place between the banks and the client at this stage.
When the documentation is all complete, we go back to the credit committee to win final approval for the deal.
Q: You’ve been mentioning “debt terms” throughout, but what exactly do the terms include beyond the interest rates?
A: The main ones are the tenor (period of the loan) and the repayment term.
For example, is it a 5-year loan? A 10-year loan?
Is it 10% principal repayment per year, or 70% over 10 years and then 30% upon exit?
The contract length for existing customers often affects this – for example, if it’s a power plant with 10-year contracts, the lenders might push for a 9-year loan to give themselves a “buffer” in case something catastrophic happens in year 10 and the entire loan can’t be repaid.
These terms also differ between “greenfield” and “brownfield” projects – for greenfield projects, debt repayment has to be postponed until cash flow is generated, and the debt will be drawn down over time instead of 100% upfront (i.e. as in the acquisition of an existing asset or company).
A Project-Based Culture and Hierarchy?
Q: OK, my head hurts from all this technical talk.
Let’s move onto what everyone really wants to know about: how much money you make.
Or maybe the culture of Project Finance groups.
A: Yeah, so the culture is heavily influenced by the type of bank (or other firm) you’re at.
The most active banks in Project Finance, from a lending perspective, tend to be Japanese and French, with local banks mixed in as well (depending on your region).
A lot of European banks have actually removed their Project Finance arms and gotten out of the business entirely – so less traditional firms are building out their PF teams these days.
There’s a difference between those two groups, but there’s a bigger cultural difference between investment banking and Project Finance: in general, you’ll see fewer “Type A” people and crazy workaholics than you would in a traditional IB group.
People here tend to think longer-term, and aren’t quite as focused on this year’s exact bonus numbers and/or hopping to the latest and greatest exit opportunity.
The hierarchy is pretty much the same as in the investment banking career path: Analyst, Associate, VP, Director, and MD, but it’s less of an “up or out” culture.
Promotions tend to happen as long as you stick around, but it can be a slower process unless you perform really well.
Stability is one of the main draws of Project Finance: you’re giving up pay, but you’re getting better hours and you’re less likely to be fired via a quick trip to the conference room.
Q: On that note, the pay. The pay. What can you say?
A: It’s definitely a discount to IB pay.
Please don’t quote me on this, but here’s a report on salaries in Asia for an example.
They report MD salaries of 3 million HKD to 6 million HKD (roughly, $400K USD to $800K USD) in Leveraged Finance, but only 2 million HKD ($260K USD) to 2.3 million HKD ($300K USD) in Project Finance.
Analyst and Associate numbers aren’t so far apart, but there’s still a 20-40% discount vs. Leveraged Finance if you look at the Analyst and Associate numbers in Singapore and Hong Kong.
You’ll still make more money than the average university or business school graduate, of course, but you should NOT go in expecting pay on par with investment banking salaries or private equity salaries.
Q: You mentioned earlier that Project Finance teams like people with strong credit backgrounds.
Where have you seen co-workers go after working in PF?
A: Mostly Leveraged Finance teams at banks or corporate development teams (mostly clients). Some will also join credit funds on the buy-side, or go to related lending roles.
Getting into traditional investment banking industry groups, M&A groups, or private equity is less common, although I have seen a couple friends move into such roles.
Q: So, bottom-line: Project Finance is for you if…
A: If you like to work on deals, and especially the credit side of deals, but you want a better work/life balance than you get in IB/PE, and you’re willing to accept lower pay in exchange for that.
Having a strong interest in government policy and infrastructure assets also helps.
Projected Resources
Q: Any recommended resources for readers who want to work in Project Finance?
A: I asked around, but my firm does not allow us to share our internal training resources.
NOTE FROM BRIAN: Fortunately, I used my ninja powers to secure a sample Project Finance model for you anyway – click here to check it out.
No, this is not exactly “light reading material,” but it gives you a sense of what to expect in this sector from a technical standpoint.
Q: Great, thanks.
And we sort of skipped over this in the beginning, but what was the recruiting process for Project Finance like?
A: It’s very similar to private equity / investment banking recruiting, with multiple rounds of interviews where you meet everyone, and then a modeling test at the end.
They really like people with credit experience (LevFin, DCM, and maybe even mezzanine funds), though they’re open to candidates from other backgrounds.
The questions are everything you’d expect: “Why Project Finance?” “Tell me about your deal experience.” “How do you evaluate an investment?”
The modeling test I received was fairly simple: they just asked me to build a DCF for an infrastructure asset and then estimate how much debt the project could take on.
The FCFs in my model came out to around $100 million over the life of the project, so I took a guess and said “$80 million of debt – an 80% leverage ratio seems appropriate.”
That was actually wrong and overly aggressive: the asset that I modeled typically has a leverage ratio closer to 60%, but it wasn’t a deal-breaker and I won the offer anyway since my model was mechanically correct.
For the “Why Project Finance?” question, you can cite the points we discussed and explain that you like macroeconomics, government policy, and being able to connect with more tangible output – and say that you see yourself as more of a “finance person” than a strategy / operations person.
As long as the project is repaying your debt in a healthy manner, there is almost nothing you can do to influence the exit or the asset’s performance in Project Finance, so there’s little of the “operational side” that you see in traditional PE.
Q: Awesome. Thanks for your time. I learned a lot!
A: My pleasure.
About the Author
Brian DeChesare is the Founder of Mergers & Inquisitions and Breaking Into Wall Street. In his spare time, he enjoys lifting weights, running, traveling, obsessively watching TV shows, and defeating Sauron.
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Hi Brian,
I graduated last year 2022, and worked in one of the big four for nearly a yearly and recently landed a job as Project Finance Associate in one of the biggest bank. I am in the lending side.
I am wondering what would be the career exits option after 2-3years?
Personally, I am aiming to move into Private Equity, investment banking or even investment management.
Is it helpful with the experience I would gain in Project Finance from the lending side to transit into those areas I mentioned above?
Thank you in advance!
Those are all potential options, but you could probably do anything related to lending since PF is basically a lending role but for assets rather than companies. Anything with overlap in IB, such as power/utilities, infrastructure, or even industrials might work. Investment management would be more challenging.
PE could work, but I think you might be more limited to infrastructure PE (search this site for the article). The main point is that you should think about other lending roles as well (real estate, direct lending, mezzanine, etc.), because they may work even if you lack direct experience analyzing entire companies.
Thanks Brian.
My role is mainly focusing on portfolio management within the bank. I would have opportunity in the future to move to origination team. Will this works if I want to break into IB/PE/LevFinance?
I also have a masters degree in Finance major in Asset Management (investment). Do you think it is worthwhile to do another masters degree in one of the top universities for a better career opportunity?
Yes, the origination team could work for those. I don’t think it’s worthwhile to do another Master’s degree if you already finished one and have the PF Associate role now. Master’s degrees are better for candidates with less full-time experience who are trying to make a career change without an MBA.
Hey Brian,
Thanks for the post. What do you think the likelihood of breaking into Project Finance after audit? I’m thinking of transferring from audit out to project finance at a big 4 (infrastructure advisory group). The thing is it looks like the requirement even at the most junior position requires a functional knowledge of the infrastructure procurement model (i.e., P3). Would like to hear your thoughts on this.
I don’t think it’s very likely because audit has almost nothing to do with PF. PF is about forward-looking projections and thinking about scenarios for different types of projects and how they might impact the lenders. Audit is backward-looking and based mostly on companies’ historical performance. You normally need to get more debt/equity or transaction-related experience to have a good shot at joining a group like Project Finance. But you might be able to move around internally if your Big 4 firm has a dedicated group.
I believe the situation has changed a lot since this article was written. Today there appears to be a contrasting trend and a huge need for PF/infrastructure teams in banks. Firstly, due to governments’ lower fiscal spending (especially in Europe) there is a need for private sector involvement in infrastructure development and PF. Secondly, the accelerating climate crisis has created a screaming demand for project finance (renewable energy for example). I think that more banks are likely to be building out their PF teams today and in the near future.
Nice article, looking forward to the updated one!
Thanks. There is more of an emphasis on infrastructure and renewables at banks now, but I still think the European and Japanese banks tend to be more into this field than the U.S. firms (but that may have changed – not sure). We have covered related topics more recently if you look at the following articles:
https://mergersandinquisitions.com/infrastructure-private-equity/
https://mergersandinquisitions.com/power-utilities-investment-banking/
https://mergersandinquisitions.com/metals-mining-investment-banking-group/
As for whether or not any of this will solve climate: Well, I’m not sure I want to go down that path, but I am quite skeptical that renewables alone will be the solution due to some basic math issues. But I agree that spending will increase over time.
Thanks Brian for the very nice article!
Still very practical / helpful after almost 10 years.
Cheers
Thanks! A new version is coming soon…
Thanks for the article!
I am currently interning at a large Japanese Project Finance Bank in Asia and am interested in breaking into the vanilla m&a IB in the future. Do i go for the usual top US MBA -> Associate route after 3-5years in Project Finance or will a MSF straight after grad be better? THANKS!
I don’t really think you need an MBA to move from PF into traditional IB. So the MSF route is better, assuming you leave after 1-2 years rather than 3-5.
Thanks Brian <3
Deciding between Project Finance and Public Finance investment banking. Couple of things: what are the “core skills” one must develop to succeed in these fields. And what are the biggest difference between the two. ( Although I can read what separates them, what really makes them different).
The skills part is what I really would like to know. Credit, bond knowledge, modelling???
Thanks
Frankie B. Hicks
These are very, very different fields. Project Finance tends to require more hands-on modeling experience at a granular level and offers higher pay, better exit opps, etc., while public finance is higher level, more specialized and better for work/life balance. Please see: https://mergersandinquisitions.com/public-finance-investment-banking/
Dear Brian, a loyal reader here.
I am a master’s student having my last semester which will end in August. I am from Taiwan and study in Frankfurt. I recently got an internship offer at a small advisory firm doing renewable energy debt advisory and some M&A for the SPV. It’s from July to October, and being converted to a full-time analyst is possible.
Meanwhile, I just got a full-time analyst offer at Eight Advisory, doing infrastructure and project finance. It will also advise debt and M&A, but not only in renewable energy.
I am thinking about two options. The first one is take the full-time job. After 1 year try to move to a bigger name.
The second option is to do the internship. After this internship, try to leverage this opportunity to do another internship at a better name and try to get the return offer. (It’s possible to do the internship after graduation)
My goal in 5 years is to enter a decent bank/fund and use the name to go back to Asia. I am hesitating between these 2 options. One is riskier because I am not sure that I will successfully do an internship at a larger firm. The other one is safer, but I am not sure that I will be able to join a good bank with that Eight Advisory brand name. Do you have suggestion? I heard it is hard to move from the advisory side to the financing side? Is it possible to break into maybe LevFin through this full-time experience?
Would really appreciate your thoughts!
Many thanks!
Dennis
If you have a full-time offer at a boutique and an internship at a boutique, it’s almost always better to accept the full-time offer because then you won’t have to worry about what to do when your internship ends. If they’re both smaller firms, there won’t be much of a difference in brand names anyway. You could join the energy/infrastructure/PF groups of various banks from there.
Can you transition from in-house project finance team at Public Finance bank (like a BB) to traditional Project Finance IB at one of the French banks?
Thanks for this article!
Potentially, yes, but I think you would get objections over the fact that the modeling and technical skill sets are quite different.
Hi Brian,
This is a very interesting overview of what PF is all about. My background in Engineering/Project Management/Facilities Maintenance Management. However, of late, my interest is in Development Finance. I am enrolling in M.Sc Program in Development Finance, with the hope of doing a PhD in the field.
However, I am interested in specializing on Infrastructure Finance, so my concern here is that current I earn over $100k and I am a Canadian. I am wondering with M.Sc and PhD, what do you think I could do to get into this field? I want to get into the field possibly after my M.Sc, the PhD could be ran on part time, so after my M.Sc, I am thinking of getting into the field for practical experience, what can I do?
They do not care much about PhD’s. In fact, you’d be overqualified with those degrees, and it would probably be more difficult to win offers. Your best bet is to enroll in a traditional Master’s in Finance program that leads to jobs at finance firms and recruit through that. Engineers have a bit of an advantage in winning PF roles, but ultimately it’s still a credit analysis/modeling job, and they want to see experience in those areas.
Hi Brian,
This article is very informative.
Can PF professional get a job at private equity fund or private debt fund? It should be very competitive assuming that many ex investment bankers are going after those limited opportunities, but does PF experience put you into a better position?
I worked at top tier IBD and M&A boutique firm for 3 years, and have been working for an asset management company (non-investment side) for 3 years btw.
PF to private equity would be tough because the modeling, deals, and skill sets are different. Maybe infrastructure PE, but I don’t know about other industries.
Private debt is probably more viable because it’s closer to PF and it’s not as competitive as traditional PE.
Hi Brian,
Awesome article. I’m looking into two MSc programs, Project Finance and Infrastructure Invest. & Finance. Is Infra. just a more narrowed aspect of PF or how would you differentiate them, which one has a better employment prospect and pay rate?
Best,
Jay
Project Finance is like the debt/lender’s version of Infrastructure. See:
https://mergersandinquisitions.com/infrastructure-private-equity/
https://mergersandinquisitions.com/infrastructure-private-equity/
The employment prospects and pay are probably about the same. It just depends on whether you want to work on the debt or equity side.
Hi Brain, given more and more PEs are raising money to set up Infra funds recently. Do you think the prospect is brighter for PF people now?
I don’t know. It’s not a sector we track closely.
I am an electrical engineer. I also did project management. I would like to do project Finance, but I am not sure about the job opportunities which are in this career. Kindly advise.
My regards.
??? I’m not sure what you’re asking. These are all completely different fields. Project Finance has nothing to do with project management or electrical engineering. To do PF, you need to know about accounting, financial analysis, credit analysis, etc., which are completely different from what you do in engineering or project management.
I’m training for the Project Management Professional (PMP), Program Management Professional (PgMP), and Project Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP) certifications, and was wondering if these certifications are useful alone in getting into Project Finance?
No.
I’m currently a new economist (one year) for a globally recognised engineering consultancy firm working within economic maritime division that has only recently acquired by this firm. This divisions bread and butter is consulting on large port development projects providing both market reports as well as building capital budget models for these projects. Essentially port operators/developers come to us for market studies/business feasibility reports (including the creation of these capital budget models) that they then take to banks and investors to use to help raise capital for the project. I would be essentially providing that initial financial model you recieve in those “invesment packages” you mention. Though sometimes we work along side BB banks and PE firms when doing these reports and models. If I wanted to pursue a role in PF would it be best to stay at my current role and build experience, or should I be seeking other roles in M&A or leveraged finance as a means to get into PF? My education includes an H.Ba in Econimcs, an MSc in Economic Growth & Innovation, and an MSc in Finance.
It’s better to gain experience in a debt-related role, such as Leveraged Finance.
This interview was enjoyable and interesting. I’ve done a bit of reading into the subject of PF and some conclusions/questions have come up:
1- It seems both investment banks and commercial banks participate in PF
2- I am yet to find a site showing ‘apply for our PF division’ – although I have seen PF analyst positions advertised but they were all by commercial banks.
3- Do you think the pay in PF between investment and commercial banks would vary a lot?
4- With regards to entering the industry the answers are still illusive. I have a keen interest in PF especially due to the fact that it’s more tangible and ‘real’ than other parts of finance. But, where to begin? Commercial banks in their structured finance or institutional banking and markets divisions? IB in leveraged finance to then transfer? Big 4 ?
Anymore interviews on this topic would be amazing. Cheers and keep up the good work.
I don’t have immediate answers to your questions, but the best path into Project Finance is probably doing something debt-related at an investment bank. So IB is likely a better bet than those other options.
Yes, there is a pay difference at investment vs. commercial banks, but I’m not sure if it’s a huge one.
Brian, you mentioned that engineers do get in, but only after having some finance experience…
I currently have 5 years experience in designing/constructing infrastructure, getting MBA (top 25), and was offered and will be taking a BB commercial banking MBA gig as a generalist after MBA.
Are the skills I pick up at commercial banking transferable? What are the chances to break into project finance with my background? Thanks for your opinion.
Yes the skills can potentially be transferable. They would probably view it more favorably than a traditional IB industry group background if you know more about debt coming from that background (i.e. credit analyst in commercial banking), but they would probably still favor someone with say levfin experience.
I’m just curious about how someone with previous Big 4 audit and financial reporting experience can make the switch to Project Finance. What roles can I pursue now that I can leverage into project finance later on. From reading above, it seems that I have to build credit experience and work on my financial modelling skills. Would a commercial bank be a good starting point?
Yes, credit experience and modeling are key – at the Big 4, yes, try to work with commercial banks, infrastructure firms, oil/gas/energy, anything that raises a lot of debt to fund its operations and requires more in-depth credit analysis.
How about recruiting? Do engineers have any chance against finance people? I am very interested in this field! Sadly studied engineering.
Yes, people with engineering backgrounds do get in… but typically they do something finance-related first, such as an internship or full-time job related to debt or credit analysis.
What about entry opportunities for people coming from engineering? I am very interested in this field and plan to apply after graduation. Do we stand any chance against finance people?
Generally, they’re only looking for experienced candidates – so I’m not sure if you could get in right after graduating. The engineering background might help a bit, but they want people who have experience analyzing debt.
An engineering background is generally viewed favourably in PF advisory. Don’t know how banks do evaluate this, since their advisory business tends to focus on financing and supporting the lending operations rather than a holistic advisory, but non-financing advisory (Big 4, certain other accounting, specialist boutiques) generally look very favourable upon engineering grads with very good modelling skills (key component) though obviously some finance experience helps. In the case of Big 4 I’d think some kind of selling point regarding finance would be necessary to actually get into the project finance teams, since Big 4s do offer a broad arrange of services to large-scale projects (infrastructure, mining, Oil&Gas etc.), some of which do not necessarily feature as much finance and they might be keen to put engineers mostly in these areas rather than directly into the PF teams.
Overall I have colleagues (Big 4) in different countries with an engineering backgrounds and have seen CVs of other companies which engineering degress. So chances at these places are not bad at all.
Thanks for adding that – but like you said, I think even with an engineering background you would still likely need prior finance experience to have a good chance at Project Finance, correct? I think he was asking if it’s possible to go from engineering undergrad into PF immediately after.
A colleague of mine was an aerospace engineer who started out at a small consultancy which provided mostly risk assesments and modelling for large projects and then joined our PPP team. However, this was more than ten years ago, so things might have changed.
I think it largely depends on the type of the position. In some cases a team might primarily look for someone to model, while the actual structuring and analysis is done by other team members. This makes one technically part of the PF team and gives one the opportunity to learn about structuring etc. from colleagues. But I don’t know how many of these spots actually go around, especially since interested graduates nowadays already have some kind of finance experience beforehand.
Thanks very much for the article! It came at a great time for me as I just got a somewhat relevant job. My firm actually underwrites debts abroad for real estate development funds in the US (with a very specific type of lenders…) However there is another team doing DD, modeling and valuation, and my team then “market” the deal to the local lenders based on their research. We participate in initial feasibility analysis and give feedbacks to the DD team though. What is my chance of moving to Project Finance in the future and what should I focus on learning during my current job? Thanks!
Thanks! I think you could potentially get into PF, but they would probably want to see more DD / modeling / valuation experience… so I would do anything you can to move to that other team, or at least contribute to any work they have to do but do not have the resources to complete. Usually PF teams want people with a lot of debt modeling experience, so do everything you can to get that and try to spin any feasibility analyses you do to seem more debt-related / analytically-intensive.
I’ve worked in PF for a long time across several firms, including large US investment banks and large European and Japanese firms. The article was interesting and informative, but I would personally add that this discussion was focused on only one of the areas covered in project finance. From a wider perspective, there are PF groups at almost every investment bank which focus on various types of executions in the PF market, from PE/infrastructure investments to advisory to all types of capital markets to lending. Its a broad, dynamic and growing area, and intellectually stimulating as described above. For interviewees, focus on “real” asset valuation skills generally, debt sizing/structuring skills, a basic understanding of structured/project finance SPV techniques, and enthusiam for the type of work (as described in the article).
Thanks for adding all that. Yes, agreed that this interview definitely only covered one area – I’ll see if we can cover additional groups in the future as well. Thanks for the interview tips!
Is Project Management (PMP), Program Management (PgMP), or Project Portfolio Management (PfMP) useful certifications or skills, for breaking into Project Finance?
Any idea about the use of capital budgeting , i thought it would extensively mentioned in the article
Not sure on that one – the interviewee may stop by later to provide additional comments.
How do you go about building a business case for an investment before sending to committee? I’m curious about the details and how it is formed.
I’ll have to follow-up with the interviewee on that one, but I imagine it would be something like, “We’ll get a yield of XX% on this investment, which meets the threshold we’re targeting. At the same time, there is only a 10-20% chance that we lose $X amount of funds on this, and even in the worst case scenario if the project completely fails, we’ll only lose $Y – given our criteria, that’s an acceptable potential loss. As you can see, here’s the analytical output that supports both of those scenarios – for example, if a large percentage of customers cancel their contracts early, or, in the worst possible case, if all customers leave and the owner is forced to sell the partially completed asset at a bargain price.”
Would you say there are a lot of project finance positions in NYC? Japanese and French banks were mentioned … wondering if one would have to go to those countries to go into project finance.
Are American banks not active at all in project finance?
Some US-based banks do Project Finance, but it is more common at banks based in other regions. You don’t necessarily have to go to Europe or Asia to do Project Finance – the interviewee was not even based in Japan or Europe. But you do stand a better chance of working in PF if you’re working at the local offices of one of those banks.
I work Project Finance for a European-Spanish bank in New York, and I can tell that there are a lot of PF teams in the city, even with the American banks. I am in the Latin American team in New York, but we have also a USA team in the office, I believe most banks have The similar structure.
They also have PF people in local Latin American offices that mostly work on projects that get financed with the local banks (infrastructure). Compared to working on projects in New York which raise money from international banks (oil & gas, power, and renewables).
Thanks for adding that!
The article briefly discusses traditional IB backgrounds but how do you think these PF firms would view experience as a Credit Analyst at a BB Commercial Bank (JPM,BofA, WF)?
They would probably view it more favorably than a traditional IB industry group background since you will know more about debt coming from that background, but they would probably still favor someone with Leveraged Finance experience.
Hey Brian,
What kind of technical questions should I expect from PF interviews? (valuation and accounting questions like IB interviews or more on debt?)
Also, would there always be a modelling test during the interview stage?
They may still ask accounting/valuation questions, but they will probably focus more on debt and debt-related questions such as how you evaluate credit risk.
I think a modeling test is very likely if you’ve had prior full-time experience… not as likely for internships or for a first job out of school, but PF groups do not hire from those categories very often.