Materials
Participants will be provided with a package of materials useful to the structuring and analysis of specially tailored financing techniques, including pertinent articles, rating agency reports and sample documentation from actual deals done in Europe and elsewhere.

Instructors
Ian Giddy has taught finance at NYU, Columbia, Wharton, Chicago and in 30+ countries abroad for the past two decades. He was Director of International Fixed Income Research at Drexel Burnham Lambert from 1986 to 1989. The author of more than fifty articles on international finance, he has served at the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury and has been a consultant with numerous corporations and financial institutions in the U.S. and abroad. As a banker and consultant he has been involved in the growth of the ABS market in the USA, Europe and Asia. He is the author or co-author of The International Money Market, The Handbook of International Finance, Cases in International Finance, Global Financial Markets, Asset Securitization in Asia and The Hudson River Watertrail Guide.

Equity-linked securities, including warrant bonds, convertible notes, preferred stock, index-linked securities and others now offer corporations and banks a means of financing during circumstances when ordinary techniques fall short. There is no longer a clear division between debt and equity. Companies seek the best of each, while lenders and investors often demand the security and priority of claims offered by debt, while expecting some participation on the upside in exchange for the risks they take.

This "bootcamp" workshop explains why and when corporations and financial institutions should issue equity-linked funding, asset-backed securities, levereraged finance or other forms of structured finance. In four information-packed days of instruction and application, we offer an economic cost-benefit analysis of the techniques, an insight into the legal, accounting, tax and regulatory principles, the risks and how they can be managed, methods of cash-flow modelling, and a roadmap for choosing among the alternative forms of these techniques that are employed in today's capital market.

One goal for participants is to develop a check list or rapid overview of the key criteria in a structured finance deal, to consider when analysing a proposal, so as to grasp the main strengths and risks of each structure after an initial rapid analysis.

The workshop will include case studies of actual financings, as well as hands-on exercises, and will give participants the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of deals through presentations and discussions. 

Some of the issues to be explored:

• What is structured finance? Why and when should companies consider the use of structured financing techniques?
  
• What are the key legal and credit issues surrounding asset-backed financing, and how can they be satisfied?
• Synthetic ABS: how do they really work, and what are their strengths and shortcomings? How are credit derivatives used in conjunction with synthetics?
  
• When is a so-called ABS really a corporate bond -- where the investor is simply taking business risk? What is "whole business securitization?" And "future flow" ABS?
• How do equity-linked financing techniques such as convertible bonds work, and when does it make sense to use them? How are they priced?
• What is leveraged finance? How can it be use to enable a management buyout or other forms of ownership transition? When should a company undertake a leveraged recapitalization?