Another Tom Wolfe special! (See: Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Fund Liquidity Facility)
Stocks and bonds offer different ways to invest in a company. They operate differently and have different pros and cons. Meanwhile, there are securities - called convertible bonds - that offer aspects of both types of investment. An asset swapped convertible option transaction re-separates these functions - splitting the bond and stock parts of a convertible bond.
A bond represents a loan. When you buy a bond, you are basically loaning money to a company, the grown-up version of spotting a buddy a few bucks for dinner. Eventually, hopefully, your buddy (or the company) will pay you back.
A stock, on the other hand, represents the purchase of ownership, or at least a part ownership. You aren't owed any money, as you would be with a bond, but you hope to make money as the company grows. As the company's value increases, the stock's value increases as well.
A convertible bond combines these investments. It is a bond, paying a yield and coming with a promise of repayment. However, the security also comes with an option to convert it into stock (hence the "convertible" part). So if you want, you can, under conditions laid out in the convertible bond, change the bond into a certain amount of stock at a certain price.
Here's the trade off, though: to convert into stock, you have to give up the bond. No more yield. No more guaranteed payments.
The ASCOT presents a "have your cake and eat it too" opportunity. The mechanics of the transaction are relatively complicated. But the result is splitting the bond part of the convertible bond from the stock part. You can hold the bond, with all the yield and guaranteed return, while still getting the upside available from owning stock.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is a swap, and what is a s...49 Views
Finance allah shmoop what is a swap And what is
a swap Shin Um can we just say it's an
option to swap You know like microsoft is a micro
computer software thing or like the electrocution is electricity and
execution or the bromance is you know brother and romance
which is something totally different when dealing with gerbils Anyway
one day a guy was holding a swap turned a
corner wasn't looking where he was going then glam o
he ran into an option What came of it was
a super hybrid type of security were in a slop
like i swap you so many dollars for so many
euros is tacked onto an option You want the ability
to pay off your loan either in us dollars or
in euros assuming they still exist when your loan comes
due That whole brexit thing that issue have the option
to swap the flavor of payments you're making for the
hundred grand You borrowed no it's houses play out well
When the bond was issued one dollar bought you one
euro and the interest rate was eight percent So you
paid eight grand a year to rent that hundred for
ten years at which point you're going to pay it
all off simple but after five years the exchange rates
have drifted massively Magic fairy dust was sprinkled by wizards
all over europe They beat back the thirty two hour
work week Corruption unions and economic misery wrought by not
being able to compete with china russia in africa and
now amazingly the euro is a much stronger currency than
the u s dollar that's kind of a fictional story
here that we'll make enough In fact one euro buys
you two u s dollars like it when the euro
was first put out there So if you holding the
swap shin on the interest payment flavor of the hundred
grand you borrowed if you so choose you can pay
that eight grand in euros that is instead of the
eight thousand dollars a year in interest you can pay
for thousand euros It's almost a ziff your interest rate
was cut in half That's not really it's a value
is the same it's just the number of units were
cut have theirs You know that works And if you
live in europe and work in europe and we're paid
in euros Well it really is like a roman holiday
of interest rates of just want to focus on the
numbers But the values of the same there's No free 00:02:15.938 --> [endTime] lunch here even in swap shen lang
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