One engagement model,
applied end to end
Most advisers arrive at a defined point. We hold the whole line.
A major project in Bangladesh touches an investment authority, a sector regulator, a ministry, a central bank, a land or environmental process, a local partner, a lender and a contractor. Each of those counterparties is competent within its own remit. None of them is responsible for the sequence as a whole, and the sequence is where projects fail.
Fratres takes that responsibility. We are not a broker and not a lobbyist. We are the party that carries a multi-counterparty process from the first assessment through to the point where something has been built, licensed or funded — and then stays with it.
The model below is deliberately linear on the page and rarely linear in practice. Stages three and four run in parallel on almost every mandate, and stage two is frequently revisited once the approvals map is complete. What does not change is that no stage is skipped and no stage is delegated away.
Six stages, in order.
- 01
Market and opportunity assessment
Before anything is committed we establish whether the opportunity is real. That means testing demand and offtake rather than accepting a projection, identifying who is already positioned, and confirming that the asset, licence or land at the centre of the proposition is genuinely available on the terms assumed. We read the policy direction behind a sector as closely as the economics in front of it, because a project here can be commercially sound and still not proceed. The client receives a written assessment that states what supports the opportunity, what undermines it, and what would have to be true for it to work.
- 02
Counterparty and structure design
Once the opportunity holds, the questions become what shape the investment should take and who it should be made with. We set out the entry vehicle options — wholly owned subsidiary, joint venture, economic zone entity, concession company — and the consequences of each for ownership limits, approvals, tax treatment and the route by which returns eventually leave the country. In parallel we define what a local partner would actually have to supply, and begin identifying candidates against that definition rather than against availability. The client receives a structuring memorandum and a screened shortlist.
- 03
Regulatory pathway mapping
Approvals in Bangladesh are not a single queue. Some consents run in parallel, some are strictly conditional on another being granted first, and some carry a validity period that can expire before the permission they were obtained to unlock arrives. We build an inventory of every consent the project requires, the authority responsible for each, and the dependencies between them, then reduce that to a critical path showing which approvals gate financial close and which can be pursued alongside. This is the stage at which most imported timetables are corrected, and it is far cheaper to correct here than after signature.
- 04
Stakeholder and government engagement
A proposal that reaches an authority cold — unsolicited, unbriefed, addressed to the wrong body or arriving at the wrong point in the planning cycle — invites delay rather than refusal, and delay is harder to argue with. We map which institutions hold which decision, prepare briefing material to the standard those institutions use, request meetings through official channels, and keep a written record of what was discussed and what was undertaken. Engagement is conducted openly, on the record, and in the client’s name. Nothing is arranged informally on anyone’s behalf.
- 05
Transaction support to close
From heads of terms through to close we work alongside the client’s legal, tax and technical advisers rather than in place of them. That means holding the negotiation calendar together, keeping the conditions precedent list current and honest, chasing the consents that sit on the critical path, and making sure the commercial position agreed in a meeting is the position that reaches the document. Where a joint venture is involved we press hardest on governance — reserved matters, funding obligations, deadlock and exit — because those clauses are what the relationship will be tested against later.
- 06
Post-close delivery support
Closing is the point at which most advisory relationships end and most project risk begins. Consents carry conditions, licences require renewal, reporting obligations fall due, and the institutional relationships built during approval need to be maintained rather than rediscovered under pressure. We hand over a live obligations register, remain available to the entity that now has to operate, and continue the engagement programme with the authorities involved. The firm stays in place because a project that stalls in year two damages the same reputation that made year one possible.
Four capabilities, applied across every stage.
Investment Facilitation
We take international capital from initial market assessment through structuring, approvals and deployment — holding the process together across every counterparty it has to touch.
02Government Relations
Structured, transparent engagement with ministries, authorities and regulators — building the institutional relationships that let a project be understood before it is judged.
03Regulatory Engagement
Mapping and navigating the approvals architecture — BIDA, BEZA, PPP Authority, sector regulators — so that sequencing is understood before capital is committed.
04Partnership Development
Identifying, assessing and structuring relationships with local partners, sponsors and operators — including the due diligence that determines whether a partnership should exist at all.
Written scope, defined phases, an agreed point at which either side may stop.
Every engagement begins with a written scope. It records the objective in the client’s own terms, the stages that will be worked, the deliverable at the end of each, the information the client must provide for the work to proceed, and the basis on which fees are calculated and invoiced. Nothing begins on a handshake.
Mandates are phased rather than sold whole. The first phase is almost always assessment, and it is deliberately short. If the assessment says the opportunity does not hold, the engagement ends there and both parties have spent proportionately. Continuation to the next phase is a decision, not a default.
Before a scope is signed we run our own acceptance checks: client due diligence and beneficial ownership verification, a sanctions and adverse media screen, and a conflicts review against the mandates we already hold. Where a conflict cannot be managed, we decline. We also decline work where the objective depends on an outcome no adviser can legitimately promise.
Why we work with a limited number of counterparties at a time.
The work described on this page cannot be volume business. A mandate that runs from assessment to close and beyond consumes senior attention continuously, not in bursts, and the institutional engagement at the centre of it depends on the same small number of people being consistently present and consistently accurate.
There is a second reason, and it matters more. Advocacy has a credibility budget. An adviser who brings six competing propositions in a sector to the same authority in the same year spends that budget on volume and has none left when it counts. We would rather be the firm whose next submission is read carefully.
Senior attention
Sector exclusivity
Institutional standing
Duration
How we judge whether the work was any good.
The project reaches a decision
A clear no, reached early and for stated reasons, is a legitimate outcome and a considerably better one than a mandate that is allowed to drift. We would rather tell a client in month three that the approvals architecture does not support the timetable than manage an expectation for two years.
The structure survives contact with the authorities
The test of the work done at stage two is whether the entry vehicle, ownership split and funding route submitted for approval are the ones that were designed, rather than a version rebuilt under time pressure after a first submission failed.
The record is defensible
Every institutional meeting, submission and commitment is documented. If a decision is later questioned — by a regulator, a lender, an auditor or an incoming board — the file should answer the question without anyone needing to rely on memory.
The relationship outlasts the transaction
Repeat mandates and continued access to the same institutions are the only measures of this work that cannot be manufactured. They are the ones we hold ourselves to.
The standards that govern how the work is conducted are published in full. See governance and integrity and the legal and policy register.
Begin a conversation
The useful first conversation is usually about sequencing rather than capital. Enquiries are reviewed by the partnership and answered directly.
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