Lately, the project finance handled by the financial institutions has emerged as new issue of our domestic financial community. Project finance is secured on the future cash flows for the recourse to its principal, unlike the ordinary corporate financ...
Lately, the project finance handled by the financial institutions has emerged as new issue of our domestic financial community. Project finance is secured on the future cash flows for the recourse to its principal, unlike the ordinary corporate financing. Therefore, it is very important to precisely estimate the capacity of the projects of creating the cash flows as well as their values. The results of analyzing the economic validity of the projects may provide for the grounds for important decision makings on such issues as fund-raising plans, loan interests, redemption plan, dividends, and other risk management plans including insurance. Nevertheless, few preceding studies have focused on such issues, and some preceding case studies could not use sufficient information or data only to comprehend the project financing superficially, much less its unique structure and processes.
The primary purpose of this study was to survey and analyze the cases of the project finance reviews by important factor and thereby, provide for some basic data useful to future studies. For this purpose, the researcher examined concept, characteristics, needs and other points of the project finance to address the problems impeding the project finance and explore their solutions to suggest the ways to effectively raise the funds for the real estate development projects and activate the project finance for them.
The important elements of the project finance are participants (interested parties), stages and procedures, required fund and methods of raising it, risk analysis and management and feasibility study. First of all, the participants are project developer, financial institution raising the fund and sharing the risk, constructor, government and other expert groups assessing technical and economic aspects of the project independently. These participants play diverse roles from the initial planning stage to operation of the project, centering around the special corporation or the project company.
Stages of the project finance may be divided into preparation, construction and operation. At the stage of preparation, participants are engaged in market planning, feasibility study, fund-raising, execution or other important contracting. At the stage of construction, the most sensitive aspects are construction cost exceeded and construction period delayed, and so, various measures are explored to prevent such risks. At the last stage of project operation, it is important to ensure efficient managerial ability and secure sufficient liquidity in preparation for the initial market risk. The risk factors of the project finance may be divided according to the stages into design and construction risks, ground-breaking risk and operation risk, or into economic risk, political risk and force majeure. The interest risks can be managed with the financial risk management using the financial engineering like the interest rate swap or other non-financial risk managements through various contracts, insurances and guarantees. The non-financial risk managements through insurance and guarantee are used more.
In order to review the project finances, domestic banks collect information about the projects and assess the contents and sizes of the risk (risk assessment), and evaluate the feasibility of the projects, design the financial structure and explore the ways to preserve their credits. The important decisions made by domestic banks about the project finances are focused on firm guarantee of their credits and estimation of the cash flows or the sources of redemption. Evaluation of the project value and the various risk factors are the most important points for reviewing the project finance. Only if the cash flows and ratio of return can be determined under reasonable assumptions and in consideration of the various risk factors, the project developers may decide on their projects, while financial institutions can decide how to raise and structure the fund and determine the loan and redemption conditions.
For the case study, the researcher sampled 6 apartment housing buildings at Minrak-dong, Busan and 'reconstruction of high-end villas at Dogok-dong, Seoul and thereby, reviewed various aspects of their project finances, addressed the problems and suggested the solutions to activate the project finance.