by Ling Pui-Yee, Michelle and Wu Kwok-Fai. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf [213]). / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / table of contents --- p.iii / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.iv / list of tables --- p.v / PREFACE --- p.vi / Chapter / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / What is Project Financing --- p.1 / The Scope of the Study --- p.2 / Methodology --- p.2 / Chapter II. --- PROJECT FINANCE IN HONG KONG --- p.5 / General Trend of Project Finance in Hong Kong --- p.5 / Comparison of Project Finance --- p.10 / Chapter III. --- THE ESSENTIALS OF PROJECT FINANCING --- p.15 / Definition of Project Financing --- p.16 / Types of Project Financing --- p.17 / Advantages of Project Financing --- p.18 / Project Planning Activities --- p.18 / Project Financing Activities --- p.19 / Project Appraisal --- p.19 / Risk Identification and Allocation --- p.23 / Financial Structuring --- p.35 / Financial Packaging --- p.41 / Preparation of Financial Offer --- p.47 / Chapter IV. --- CASE STUDY-EASTERN HARBOUR CROSSING --- p.61 / Background Information --- p.61 / Case Analysis of the Project --- p.62 / Project Planning Stage --- p.63 / Stage for determining the terms in the bid --- p.82 / Stage for Project Appraisal after winning the bid --- p.90 / Stage for picking appropriate financial vehicles --- p.98 / Stage of Financial Offering --- p.107 / Stage of actual arrangement --- p.109 / Stage of Documentation --- p.112 / Stage of Legal Review --- p.115 / Stage of release of credit --- p.115 / Stage of monitoring --- p.116 / Risk Allocation --- p.116 / Looking back on the progress of the project --- p.122 / Evaluation of the financing of the whole project --- p.124 / APPENDIX / BIBLIOGRAPHY

This dissertation studies topics in the areas of empirical corporate finance, banking, and financial intermediation. In the first chapter, entitled Personal Relationships in Loan Renegotiation: Evidence from Corporate Loans, I estimate the effect of personal relationships between a loan officer and a firm on the probability to renegotiate a loan and the outcomes of the renegotiation. To identify this effect, I exploit a bank reorganization in Greece in the mid-2010s, which allows me to identify two types of firms: one, those whose personal relationships with loan officers were discontinued and those whose relationships were not. This paper’s main conclusion is that personal relationships mitigate the cost of distress for the firm in a loan renegotiation. The firm is worse off following the interruption of its loan officer relationship, as it is less able to renegotiate, and the firm also receives tougher loan terms on renegotiated loans. The insights from the second chapter, entitled Lending Relationships and Moral Hazard in Loan Renegotiation, can have important policy implications related to the rise of nonperforming loans (NPLs). Many banks operating in countries that were hit by the 2010 European debt crisis, faced a significant rise in NPLs. This rise became one of the main challenges that banks face, as high levels of NPLs tie up bank capital and thus reduce profitability and increase funding costs. In the second chapter, I provide empirical evidence that banks, through efficient renegotiation and strong relationships with firms, can prevent loan defaults. This analysis suggests that firms with more distant lending relatioships are more likely to strategically delay a loan payment in order to efficiently trigger a loan renegotiation. This strategic behavior gives rise to the moral hazard phenomenon. In the third chapter, entitled Securing the Unsecured: Do stronger creditor rights affect firms’ access to credit?, I seek to understand whether stronger creditor rights influence firms’ capital structure and access to finance. To answer this question, I use the passage of an enforcement on cash assets reform in Croatia that aimed to increase the collection of the unsecured debt. To identify exogenous variation across firms affected more by the reform versus those that were not, I use a novel dataset on courts’ efficiency in dealing with the specific type of cases affected by the reform. The conclusion of the paper is that firms maintain higher leverage and have easier access to credit when creditor rights are stronger. The firms that benefit the most are medium size and have limited access to tangible assets. When firms are able to borrow more, they invest more in fixed assets.

I explore the role of participants’ relationships with borrowers and lead arrangers in syndicated lending. I predict and find that these relationships mitigate the information asymmetry problems faced by participants with both borrowers and lead arrangers, and allow participants to take a larger share in the loan. In particular, participants with a borrower relationship take, on average, a 10% larger share of the loan, with the effect being more pronounced when the borrower is informationally opaque or less conservative in its accounting. Similarly, participants with a lead arranger relationship take, on average, a 9% larger share of the loan, with the effect being more pronounced: (i) when the borrower has engaged in accounting irregularities or covenant violations in the past, (ii) when the lead arranger is a repeat lender or a large lender, and (iii) when participants have limited information acquisition capacity. Furthermore, loans with a larger total share taken by participants with a borrower or lead arranger relationship are associated with a smaller lead arranger share, less concentrated loan syndicate structure, a lower loan spread, and a lower upfront fee, consistent with these relationships mitigating information asymmetry. Overall, my study sheds light on how participant-level relationship lending shapes debt contracting.

In the last 15 years, China has greatly expanded their economic integration with Africa through a multi-dimensional approach. This paper utilizes a fixed effects approach to formally assess the impact of Chinese trade, foreign direct investment, loans, construction and engineering contracts, and labor in Africa on economic growth and human development in 50 African countries. This paper combines data from the World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI), China-Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at John’s Hopkins University, and the UN Human Development Report (HDI) covering the years 2003 to 2017. This study finds that during this period, contracts and foreign direct investment stock positively impact GDP per capita and Human Development Index, and bilateral trade positively impacts Human Development Index.

Thesis (LL.M.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Supervisor: J. Sihombing. Includes bibliographical references (l. 68). Also available in print.

<p>The aim of this research has been to describe and analyse Swedish linguistic and cultural influence, on identification, and idiomatic awareness as well as on the Spanish used by Hispanic Americans who have lived more than 12 years in Sweden.</p><p>The analysis has been carried out within the field of sociolinguistics, specifically in the area of language contact, drawing on methodological aspects of ethno linguistics, sociology of language and cognitive linguistics. The research was divided into two phases. In the first phase, we describe and analyse Corpus 1, consisting of 20 interviews of first generation Hispanic Americans political refugees. In the second phase, we describe, compare and analyse Corpus 2, which consists of 105 questionnaires distributed to first and second generation Hispanic Americans in Sweden.</p><p>The results have shown that in Sweden Hispanic Americans have gradually generated a variety of Spanish which clearly shows features of Swedish culture and language and with an aspect of standardisation due to the fact that in the intercommunication between language speakers of varieties of Spanish certain variations have slowly been eliminated over the course of time. The sociolinguistic situation of the informants has been observed as well as the nature of the immigration and identification and idiomatic awareness in relation to their integration or lack of integration into Swedish society. The use of 38 words with a high level of synonymy was also investigated in order to establish standardisation of these representative words among the varieties of Spanish, spoken in Sweden. Furthermore we have investigated clichés, lexical, semantic-pragmatic and syntactic loans from Swedish as well as Swedish cultural influence on use tense among the informants.</p>

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

The aim of this research has been to describe and analyse Swedish linguistic and cultural influence, on identification, and idiomatic awareness as well as on the Spanish used by Hispanic Americans who have lived more than 12 years in Sweden. The analysis has been carried out within the field of sociolinguistics, specifically in the area of language contact, drawing on methodological aspects of ethno linguistics, sociology of language and cognitive linguistics. The research was divided into two phases. In the first phase, we describe and analyse Corpus 1, consisting of 20 interviews of first generation Hispanic Americans political refugees. In the second phase, we describe, compare and analyse Corpus 2, which consists of 105 questionnaires distributed to first and second generation Hispanic Americans in Sweden. The results have shown that in Sweden Hispanic Americans have gradually generated a variety of Spanish which clearly shows features of Swedish culture and language and with an aspect of standardisation due to the fact that in the intercommunication between language speakers of varieties of Spanish certain variations have slowly been eliminated over the course of time. The sociolinguistic situation of the informants has been observed as well as the nature of the immigration and identification and idiomatic awareness in relation to their integration or lack of integration into Swedish society. The use of 38 words with a high level of synonymy was also investigated in order to establish standardisation of these representative words among the varieties of Spanish, spoken in Sweden. Furthermore we have investigated clichés, lexical, semantic-pragmatic and syntactic loans from Swedish as well as Swedish cultural influence on use tense among the informants.

In order to be a liberal and global economic environment, Taiwan government has been undergoing restructuring on its finane and banking policies since 1991. Subsequently, 16 new banks were established gradually and brought a tremendously competition among banks and other financial institution in Taiwan. According to the statistic of the CBC, loan making is the main business focused among banks. And due to the decreased margin between deposit interest rates and loan rates and the competition among banking institutions, the methods of assessing credit report for loan application is becoming critical. This research is to study a bank in southern Taiwan on the influence of the ¡§Small and Medium Business Credit Guarantee Fund¡¨ mechanism by adapting the statistic method of Logistic Regression. 60 cases were studied, 20 of them, the borrowers were failure to pay as required; 40 cases are in a regu;ar payment bases. The credit rating table of loan-receiving businesses in an effort to determine significant variables affecting loan quality. The study shows that : (1) The longer the term of the loan, the more likely the bank is to encounter overdue payments. In other words, the longer the relationship customer established with bank, the higher risk occurred. (2) The higher the loan rate, the more likely default will occur, which indicates that the bank¡¦s appraisal of the creditor¡¦s risk is a strong affecting loan quality. (3) The higher score of the financial health and industry characteristics, the less likelihood the creditor would fail to make on-time payments. (4) Unit executives are responsible for approving loans; the overdue payment rate was significantly higher when loans are approved by personnel above the level of unit executive. Furthermore, the study also indicate that the assessment items currently using by banks for loan application, these items include corporate capital, loan period, guarantors, repayment style, collateral. Due to current excessively overloaning, the conclusions of this study could be the considerations for bank staff to learn how to stimulate banker¡¦s loan risk management, these findings may serve as an important reference for credit policies and loan business.

Since there are no limits on the number of non-performing asset management companies imposed by the Financial Firms Merger and Acquisition Act of 2000, total numbers of such companies has been increasing in resent years. Under the circumstances of keen competition and shrinking market, non-performing asset management companies are facing enormous challenges. For this study, experts were interviewed and literatures were reviewed, resulting in a key factor structure of Taiwan¡¦s non-performing asset management companies. Quantified data are gathered and analyzed via questionnaires and AHP methods, and the most important key factors applicable for Taiwan¡¦s non-performing asset management companies are derived. To the large-scale AMCs, the most important key factors are: impact from the overall economic or real estate market condition, assisting corporations in restructuring, employees¡¦ past job experiences, and the accurate estimation for investment return. To the medium-scale AMCs, the most important key factors are: employees¡¦ past job experiences, and bidding in conjunction with large-scale AMCs or foreign capital. To the small-scale AMCs, the most important key factor is the overall economic or real estate market condition.