The equity contribution contract or the shareholder agreement is between the different providers of equity capital to the project or the SPV. We can think of these in three main categories, the first of which are operational sponsors. They're providing equity, but they're also providing know-how for the project's development. They're going to get their returns, not just from the financial return on the equity, but also the profit from their operational involvement, an increasing source of equity financing. Our equity financial participants, these are relatively new development and increasing influence in the project financial world. Since the financial crisis, these providers are just looking at the financial return. They don't provide any other role. Traditionally, most of the financing came from operational project sponsors, so this increase in financial sponsors is a new development primarily as a result of the financial crisis.

Last but not least, are the public sector governments or government, like institutions like the IFC or World Bank. Those investors are primarily focusing on growth and job creation rather than just focusing on profitability. Profit is important, but they'll have other priorities like growth and job creation, where there is a combination of private and public sector. We call this a public-private partnership or PPP.

The other main type of contract are the debt providers, and these split into two main types. There's the banks, and these are the dominant lenders. In a traditional sense, they'll be providing syndicated loans to the project. The reason the loans are syndicated is that often these projects are so large, no single entity, a single bank wants to take on all that credit risk. They're going to spread the risk of a particular project among a syndicate. The other risk reduction is that the loans are guaranteed by all the assets of the SPV. The second and growing influence in debt financing are bond investors. These are relatively new, and the reason they've grown so much since the financial crisis is that banks have had a much tougher regulatory regime to deal with. This has made it much more difficult for them to give the loans of the kind of maturity that most project finance needs.

Bond investors are looking for long-term investments with stable and predictable cash flows, and they'll often be people like life insurance companies that have long-term liabilities.