5 Publicly available information on investors' risks and rewards from private finance projects is limited. Some examples of high investor returns have attracted adverse publicity. In order to examine this topic to draw out issues for further consideration we developed an audit approach which, given the lack of available data, drew evidence from a number of sources. The sources included: publicly available data; information held by public authorities relating to the investors' bids for projects; certain unaudited data provided to us by investors; our observations of the way that the PFI market operates from our previous PFI examinations; interviews with parties engaged in PFI projects; and illustrative financial modelling which we undertook on three projects to analyse the relationship between risks and returns.
6 We examined whether authorities' use of private sector equity in recent standard form PFI contracts is value for money. Our analysis also highlights learning points from involving private investors in government projects that will be of relevance to the Treasury's current review of the PFI model. We examined whether:
• investors positively contribute to delivering the specified public services and encourage beneficial service improvements;
• investors bear, and actively manage, project risk; and
• the returns, for investors, are transparent and reasonable, derived from contracts priced in line with market principles.