Ashbourne helps governments and investors make better decisions about which public and private projects warrant investment, and the conditions under which they will be financeable.
We work in emerging markets and frontier jurisdictions, to determine whether a project can and should be built, and how it should be structured and funded.
Our senior partners come from the financing side of the table — across senior debt, project finance, mezzanine, development financing and securitisation. That is why we know what makes a project financeable.
The PPR sits between strategic concept and full feasibility — recognised as best practice by the OECD, IMF and World Bank, but largely missing in frontier jurisdictions. It delivers the hard evidence and business case justification to proceed with the strategic concept, or to stop it before engineering and structuring spend is committed.
The PPR reads for the lender or investor, not for the auditor.
Capital stack, required returns, lender tests, supporting tranches. What a lender or DFI will actually accept.
Equity classes, partner roles, governance, risk allocation. The structure that fits the project, not the structure that suits a relationship.
Licences, statutory concessions, regulatory windows, legal opinion. The conditions that make the project legally and politically buildable.
Engineering firms test buildability. Accounting and strategy firms test structure. Lenders, DFIs and sponsors test bankability. All three matter; only the third decides whether the project happens at all.
Site, process, plant, materials, throughput. The buildability test.
Governance, financial modelling, scenario work, risk allocation. The structure test.
Term sheet, sovereign carry, tariff, return, security. The bankability test.
Once our question is answered, we can narrow what is actually required in Stage 2.
The wrong projects are stopped early. The right projects are delivered faster.
Every concept passes through Ashbourne before engineering is commissioned. Projects that cannot meet financeability, structure and regulatory tests do not advance to Stage 2.
Tens of millions of dollars in engineering and design fees are not committed to projects that, in the end, would not have proceeded.
For projects that clear the gate, the PPR becomes the brief for Stage 2. Engineering scope narrows to what genuinely needs confirming. Feasibility studies support the financing case. Project delivery is sharpened.
Stage 2 fees come down. Delivery timelines compress. Outcomes are tracked against the case made at Stage 1.
Discipline against the projects that should not proceed; leverage on the projects that should.
Ashbourne's partners come from the financing side of the practice. Between us, we have arranged debt and structured project finance for sovereigns, sponsors and infrastructure projects — across senior debt, mezzanine, development financing and securitisation. That practitioner base is the credibility behind the financeability claim.
We are independent of any single tier-one firm, lender or capital source. We do not place the debt. We work only for the client — and we recommend the structure that fits the project, not the structure that suits a particular relationship.
Every report carries four mandatory partner checkpoints before sign-off — at intake, draft lock, editorial integration and reception. The pipeline cannot advance until each is cleared.
Every claim survives three independent verification streams before sign-off.
Every report is read in character as each named decision-maker who will receive it. Their objections are surfaced and weighted into the final draft.
The statutes cited in every Ashbourne report are monitored daily for ninety days after sign-off. If a statute is amended or a reform lands during the watch window, we update the report.
This is the architecture that lets a partner put their name on the report you take to the bank.
The Republic of Korea applied a mandatory pre-appraisal stage to publicly financed projects between 1999 and 2017. The arithmetic is hard to argue with.
Ashbourne brings the same discipline — recognised by the OECD, IMF and World Bank, and used by HM Treasury, NZ Treasury and Infrastructure Australia — to Papua New Guinea and similar jurisdictions.
Source: Korea Development Institute Public and Private Infrastructure Investment Management Centre (KDI PIMAC), 1999–2017 cumulative results.
The Preliminary Project Review we delivered to the client earlier this year did not return a yes or no — it returned the conditions under which the project works and a clear financing strategy. The project and client are redacted at the client’s request; the figures and the finding are not.
Minimum debt-service coverage 1.64x against a 1.40x lender covenant at 50/50 gearing.
The senior debt structure carries.
Cost of equity under CAPM build-up with full country-risk premium is approximately 19.8%.
The project model cannot carry that hurdle.
A 10–12% required return on the equity cheque is market-implied for that investor class.
Equity NPV is positive at that price.
This is the conditional answer the PPR is designed to produce — directing capital stack, partner search and regulatory pathway.
If your project is in concept and the feasibility budget is not yet committed, this is the right call to have. If your project is already underway, talk to us about whether what you are developing will be financeable.
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