Modern Project Finance: A Casebook

An insider's look at how companies structure, value, and finance large capital investments.

From the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline to Poland's A2 Motorway, Modern Project Finance: A Casebook provides a behind-the-scenes look at this dynamic and increasingly important field. Author Benjamin Esty (of Harvard Business School) presents detailed description and analysis of some of the most notable projects in the past five years. By studying these projects, you will gain important insights into the practice of project finance.

Critically acclaimed in the classroom and in the field! “I wish this book (and Ben Esty's course) had been available when I first started working in project finance. It contains many things it took me years to learn as a project finance practitioner. Project finance has become a big business and is an important method of financing economic development throughout the world, but there has been very little in the way of academic theory and research on project finance. Until now, that is, with Ben Esty's course. He has broken new ground in the rigor of his analysis, in gathering empirical data, in exploring why companie s use project finance and why bankers engage in it, and in analyzing project capital structures, how project loans should be priced, and why some projects fail.” –Chris Beale, Managing Director and Global Head of Project & Structured Trade Finance, Citigroup.

“Professor Esty is the preeminent scholar in the study of large projects, and this book is an outstanding introduction to the field of project finance. It provides a framework of theoretical coherence and practical insight that reflects the reality of experience. This exciting and important book is a major contribution to the understanding and teaching of project finance.” –Jay Worenklein, Chairman and CEO of U.S. Power Generating Company, and former Head of Project Finance at Milbank Tweed and Société Général.

“Through these case studies and his careful documentation of institutional details in both developed and developing country settings, Esty has provided an extremely valuable service to the finance profession. He opens up this important field and correctly argues that understanding the many and complex reasons why project finance is so widely used informs the general theory of corporate finance, governance, and organizational theory in important ways. His analysis and arguments that there is no simple, single explanation for the success of project finance, and that project finance can dramatically reduce a wide variety of agency costs seem right on the money.” –Michael C. Jensen , Jesse Isidor Straus Professor (Emeritus), Harvard Business School, and Managing Director of the Organizational Strategy Practice, Monitor Co.

“For people interested in project finance or how finance works in emerging markets, I highly recommend this book. These case studies provide lessons not available in traditional finance textbooks, and they do it in very interesting (and real) situations. Having taught these cases, I believe they provide students and finance practitioners with frameworks to analyze the structure of and rationale for various financing decisions made in developing countries.”–Campbell Harvey, J. Paul Sticht Professor of International Business, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University.