The field
Project finance is not a product on a shelf. It is a way of paying for a scheme whose cash flows, risks and contracts can be described. The scheme comes first. The money is arranged around it.
A holding that is not a bank does this work as an arranger. We know investors. We know the companies of the group. We know, for a given job, which of those companies will carry the contract. We do not take deposits and we do not pretend to be a licensed lender.
Public infrastructure — schools, roads, energy, water — often needs a mix of own funds, equity and loans, sometimes with a state or a municipality as the off-taker. Private buildings need the same honesty about who pays and when. The difference is the counterpart, not the need for a file.
Models such as build-operate-transfer or build-transfer are tools, not decorations. They require a construction period, an operating period or a handover, and a contract that a government or a private client can live with for years. If those assumptions are soft, the model is not ready.
Appraisal starts with the client and the legal basis of the award, the site, the contractor and the carrier company. Only then do we talk about tenor, security and the order of payments. A term sheet without that ground is a wish.
This is how we work. Capital is raised for a named scheme in Germany, Türkiye or West Africa, not for “Africa” or “construction” as a theme. The report on use of funds comes back to Berlin on a path that investors and the holding can both read.
Governments and authorities
Ministries of finance, education, energy or infrastructure, municipal treasuries and public procurement offices decide whether a scheme may be paid from the budget, from a dedicated vehicle, or from a private consortium that later transfers the asset. Those decisions are political in the proper sense: they belong to the state.
Our part is to present a scheme that those offices can examine: costs by trade, a programme, a carrier company, and a payment path that matches the law of the grant. We do not offer a government a structure it cannot defend in its own audit.
Where guarantees, sovereign support or municipal land are part of the story, they are written as what they are. A letter of comfort is not a guarantee. A memorandum is not a budget line. We keep those words in their legal meaning.
Services in detail
Project first
Client, award, site, law, contractor, carrier. If one of these is missing, we do not discuss money. The file of the scheme is the file of the finance.
Known investors
We arrange through investors we already know, in Germany and abroad. Each ticket is tied to one scheme. There is no blind pool in this work.
Own funds and loans
A typical mix is equity from the group or from partners, and loans sized to the construction and the repayment. We write the order in which each euro is used.
BOT and BT
Where a public client wants a private consortium to build and later transfer, ATES GROUP SARL can carry that model. The operating period and the handover are drafted before the first drawing.
Security
Charges, assignments of receivables, step-in rights — only what the law of the site allows and what the client has agreed. Security that cannot be enforced is not in the term sheet.
Reporting of funds
Drawings follow invoices and progress. Investors and the holding see the same numbers. A variation that changes the money returns to Berlin before it is spent.
