This 3-day course will improve participants' understanding of leveraged private equity finance and how the deals can be analyzed. The course covers the specific challenges in private equity transactions, including managing sponsor equity and the use of leveraged finance for buyouts and other purposes. The course also focuses on modeling and managing private equity investments, and on the various techniques of leveraged financing. Such instruments include first- and second-lien loans, pay-in-kind notes and mezzanine finance, and high yield bonds. Typically, the target company's assets and cash flow serve as support for the funding taken out by the acquirer, which repays the debt out of cash flow and asset disposals of the acquired company.

• Why is private equity outperforming public equity? How much of private equity is buyout capital and how much is venture capital?
• What is leveraged finance? Why and how should companies add substantial debt to their balance sheets?
• What are the key credit, pricing and rating issues surrounding leveraged financing?
• How can senior and mezzanine debt be used to facilitiate a management buyout or other forms of ownership transition? How can one assess a company's borrowing capacity?
• What is the right pricing and covenant structure for leveraged buyout lending?
• How do mezzanine financing techniques such as PIKs, warrant notes, etc work, and when does it make sense to use them? How are they priced?
• Why and when should high yield bonds be used?
• How can one model the cash flows and debt paydown in a leveraged buyout?
• How can credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations be used to manage a leveraged loan portfolio?

Who Should Attend?

The seminar is of relevance to private equity specialists, asset managers, commercial and investment bankers, securities analysts, and other individuals whose professional future may be enhanced by an understanding of leveraged and private equity financing techniques. It will also prove useful to corporate financial officers and other potential borrowers, to lenders, and to those involved in buyouts and acquisitions.

Materials

Participants will be provided with a package of materials useful to the structuring and analysis of specially tailored leveraged financing techniques, including pertinent articles, rating agency reports and sample documentation from actual deals done in North America, Europe and elsewhere. The course employs an interactive learning style, combining lectures, discussions and teamwork. A clear framework for private equity financing is presented, followed by group work on the assignments and case studies