Companies and Sponsors
Project finance and capital
"We have the project. We don't have the package that gets it funded."
Lenders don't fund projects. They fund files.
Sponsors rarely lose financing because the project is weak. They lose it because the package doesn't answer what the capital tests, in the order it tests it. We build the package, run the project against those tests, and take it to the instrument it was built for. Energy, manufacturing, logistics and infrastructure, from USD 30 million.
Energy, manufacturing, logistics and infrastructure are where we have closed. Other sectors, case by case, when the numbers support it.
Send us the project and the model. We'll tell you what's fundable and what isn't.
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What the capital actually tests.
Coverage, equity at risk, contingency, offtake, permitting, and who carries construction risk.
Every category of capital weighs these differently, and the weighting decides the outcome. A project that fails with a commercial bank on construction risk is ordinary business for a fund that prices it.
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What we build.
The memorandum, the model with the sensitivities lenders run rather than the ones sponsors prefer, sources and uses, and the risk matrix with the mitigation stated next to each line.
Most packages are written to persuade. The ones that get funded are written to be checked.
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Where we take it.
Senior debt, mezzanine, development finance institutions, export credit, infrastructure and energy funds, private credit, and family offices with an appetite for real assets. Where the size and the profile support it, a structured bond issue instead of a single lender.
There's a door for every file, and most files are only ever taken to one. Each source holds its own thresholds and its own appetite, and a deal one declines is routine business for another that prices risk differently.
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A file that's been shopped is harder to place.
Sequence matters as much as content.
Send the same file to eight lenders in a week and the declines compound: the market is smaller than it looks, the same names sit on both sides of it, and a project passed over several times carries that history into the next conversation.
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When the client is the investor.
We underwrite projects for the people putting money in, the same way we underwrite for the people raising it.
Return against the minimum an investor in that position should accept, not the one the deck projects. How much of the sponsor's own money is at risk. Contingency against what construction actually overruns. Absorption against what the submarket genuinely absorbed. Then: which thresholds it clears, which it misses, by how much, and what would close them. Sometimes the project works and the terms don't, which is a negotiation rather than a rejection.
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Companies preparing to raise.
Investors test the same things every time, and a company that fails that test in public rarely gets a second reading.
The numbers under someone else's arithmetic, the structure, the record, the team, and whether the story survives the financial statements. We run that test before you go to market and put the fixes in the order the calendar allows. Equity is often the most expensive money you'll ever take, and it isn't the only option.
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Where AVAR participates.
On projects we've underwritten and believe in, we take part directly.
Finding the asset, structuring the transaction, arranging the debt, and managing the investment alongside the investors who come in with us. Our interest sits where yours does.
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How we are paid.
A fee for the analysis and the package, delivered whether or not the project is financed, and a success fee at closing.
The first is priced on scope and is not contingent on obtaining capital. The second is agreed in writing before we begin.
Any investment opportunity is presented only to eligible investors, through offering documents, with registered partners and securities counsel where the law requires it. Nothing here is an offer or solicitation of securities.
Verification and investigation
"They gave me everything I asked for. I don't know what to ask for next."
The problem is rarely what you were told. It's what nobody mentioned.
We assemble what is actually documented about a counterparty, read it as a whole, and tell you how to proceed with what we found. That last part is where most reports stop.
Sign after the record is built.
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What we assemble.
Corporate filings and ownership, litigation and judgments, liens, sanctions and politically exposed persons records, beneficial owners, trade activity, property, contracts and correspondence.
Public registries in the United States and abroad. Then we put it in order and read it as a whole.
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What we look for.
The things that only appear when the pieces sit side by side.
Dates that contradict each other. A company formed the week before the deal it exists to sign. A party on both sides of the same transaction. A payment described one way in the contract and another in the correspondence. A record that ends where it should continue. The claim everyone repeats that nobody documented.
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The compliance file.
Your bank or your institutional partner will ask for due diligence on the counterparty, in the format they expect to receive it.
Beneficial owners, screening against sanctions and politically exposed persons lists, source of funds, and the documentation behind all of it. It is the same work, organized their way. The compliance decision always belongs to the institution.
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EB-5 projects.
Before you commit, the same work applied to the project and to the offering documents.
Whether the regional center's designation is current and the project was actually filed and approved, not merely described. Where you sit if it needs more money or the sponsor changes. The job creation methodology. The sponsor's record: petitions approved, capital returned, projects completed on the terms promised. A project can return your capital and still cost you the petition. We are not an immigration law firm; the petition is filed by your attorney or, if you need one, by one of our allied law firms.
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What you get.
Not a list of findings, which is where most reports stop, one step short of a decision.
What to require before you sign, what guarantee or escrow to demand, what to keep out of scope, what to verify at closing rather than take on trust, and when the answer is to walk away.
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Why the file is worth what it costs.
Chronologies built from tens of thousands of documents, in files that had to hold up under professional scrutiny.
The timeline built, the sources cited, the contradictions flagged, the conclusion stated before the evidence. Your board sees the decision and what it rests on, not a folder of attachments. Your attorney works on what matters instead of reading correspondence for three weeks at their hourly rate.
We report facts and documents. We don't give legal opinions. We'll tell you when the question you're asking is one for an attorney and, if you need one, introduce you to one of our allied law firms.
International markets
"I know my product. I don't know that market, what it costs me to get in, or who's already there."
Every border crossing leaves a record. Almost nobody reads it.
The price you'll compete against is already on the shelf. We price the whole distance to it, name the field you'd be entering, and read the shipment record for what your competitors and your suppliers are actually paying.
Know in six weeks what most companies learn in two years.
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The landed cost, line by line.
Not the freight quote. The duty rate your product actually falls under, and every charge between the factory and the buyer.
Port and handling, customs brokerage, inland transport, warehousing, financing cost while the goods sit, and the margin each layer of the channel takes. The difference between an estimate and the real number is usually the difference between a business and a lesson.
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The classification is a decision, not a lookup.
Products often fit more than one tariff code, and the rates differ.
Getting it right is worth more than most negotiations you'll have, and getting it wrong surfaces at the border, with the goods already on the water.
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Who is already there.
Not just the established supplier, but the field: who manufactures locally, who imports, how large each one is, and what they charge.
Which brands buyers recognize, who distributes for whom, which accounts are locked into exclusivity and which are in play. An established supplier is not a reason to stay out. It's a set of terms you have to beat, and until they're on the table, nobody can price the entry.
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What the trade record shows.
Who ships what, to whom, in what volume and at what price, for most of the trading world.
If you're buying: who else manufactures what you import, what comparable buyers pay for it, and whether your supplier sells it cheaper to someone else. If you're selling: who is buying in that market now, which importers are growing, and which buyers spread their purchases, because that is where a new entrant gets a first order. If you're defending: a competitor importing a product you thought only you carried, or a supplier who just started shipping two streets from your largest account. Most companies find out when they lose the order.
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Then the route in.
Which channel fits your product and your volume, and which specific companies to approach.
Direct to buyer, distributor, agent, your own entity. What the entry requires in registrations, labeling, certifications and local presence, and what to open the conversation with.
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And whether you can hold the position.
What happens in month nine, when the established supplier drops price to defend an account.
Or when your distributor finds more margin on someone else's line. We look at what it costs them to respond, how much room they have to move, and what it takes to make your position difficult to dislodge rather than easy to wait out.
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What we won't do.
Present a number we can't source, or tell you a market works when it doesn't.
Trade data has gaps, countries that report late and shipments described too vaguely to use. Where the record is thin, the report says so. And sometimes the landed cost cannot beat the shelf price, which is an answer worth as much as the other one.
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The People Around the Work
No cross-border transaction is covered by one professional alone. We work in alliance with law firms and with licensed specialists in every field and every country, and we coordinate them around your transaction. You deal with us.
Name your goal. We'll name what stands between you and it.
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