96. What do you know about Citi Cards?

Citi Cards are a popular choice of credit cards, and they are issued by Citibank. Citi is the world's largest credit card issuer across Citi Branded Cards and Citi Retail Services. These credit cards allow users to earn incentives for making purchases with their credit card. Points accumulate for each dollar charged on the card, and cardholders can redeem these points for various rewards..

Citi Branded Cards provides payment and credit solutions to consumers and small businesses in 34 countries. The card offers exceptional rewards, including global benefits, special offers and an annual relationship bonus:

• General reward points credit cards: cardholders can accumulate points toward a reward structure, which is based on how much the card is used over time. General reward cards offer cardholders a variety of items to cash points in for: gift cards, electronics, hotel stays, plane tickets, jewelry, pet supplies and more.

• Hotel or travel points credit cards This is a genre of credit cards specific to hotels and travel. Some cards are co-branded with hotels. These credit cards allow you to earn points for all purchases, in addition to bonus points for dollars spent on stays at the respective hotel chain.

• Airline mile / frequent flier credit cards. This type of card allows consumers to earn airline mile credits whenever they make purchases. Some cards are co-branded with a specific airline, while some are generic and can be redeemed for tickets with a variety of airlines..

Citi Retail Services provides consumer and commercial credit card products – both private label and co-branded – to national and regional retailers and their clients across North America. In addition, Retail Services delivers retail industry expertise and insights, including transaction data analytics and fully integrated marketing and loyalty programs, to help retailers expand and deepen customer relationships. These credit cards are co-branded with a major retailer, such as Disney or Amazon.com. Points are accumulated by making everyday purchases, though cardholders are awarded with double or triple points for making purchases from the co-branded retailer.

Citi cards has a core collection of cards to suit your needs, whether you are looking for a Visa or MasterCard with rewards, 0% APRs on balance transfers and purchases, or low long-term APRs.

97. What do you know about project finance?

Project finance is the long-term financing of infrastructure and industrial projects based upon the projected cash flows of the project rather than the balance sheets of its sponsors.

Usually, a project financing structure involves a number of equity investors, known as 'sponsors', as well as a 'syndicate' of banks or other lending institutions that provide loans to the operation. They are most commonly non-recourse loans, which are secured by the project assets and paid entirely from project cash flow, rather than from the general assets or creditworthiness of the project sponsors, a decision in part supported by financial modeling.[1] The financing is typically secured by all of the project assets, including the revenue-producing contracts. Project lenders are given a lien on all of these assets and are able to assume control of a project if the project company has difficulties complying with the loan terms.

There are several parties in a project financing depending on the type and the scale of a project. The most usual parties to a project financing are;

1. Project

2. Sponsor

3. Lenders

4. Financial Advisors

5. Technical Advisors

6. Legal Advisors

7. Debt Financiers

8. Equity Investors

9. Regulatory Agencies

10. Multilateral Agencies

Project development is the process of preparing a new project for commercial operations. The process can be divided into three distinct phases:

• Pre-bid stage

• Contract negotiation stage

• Money-raising stage

Project finance model

A financial model is constructed by the sponsor as a tool to conduct negotiations with the sponsor and prepare a project appraisal report. It is usually a computer spreadsheet that processes a comprehensive list of input assumptions and provides outputs that reflect the anticipated real life interaction between data and calculated values for a particular project.

Properly designed, the financial model is capable of sensitivity analysis, i.e. calculating new outputs based on a range of data variations.