The IFF School of International Captial Markets

By attending thie IFF School of International Capital Markets you will be making a decision that will elevate your skills and knowledge to a new level.  The programme is structured to provide the perfect synergy between theoretical understanding and practical applications, so you can rest assured that the focus of the training will be highly topical and guaranteed to provide you with skills and understanding that you will immediately utilise in the real world.

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The Capital Markets - Understanding the Role of the Major Participants

Issuers - Getting to Grips with Finance and Leverage

• Governments
• Agencies
• Municipalities
• Supranationals
• Financial Institutions
• Corporations

Case Study: The credit crisis of 2007-2009 - understanding the role of governments in the capital markets

Investors - Asset Allocation and Benchmarks

• Pension funds
• Fund managers
• Insurance companies
• Hedge funds
• Money managers
• Central banks
• Commercial banks

The Role of Commercial Banks - Credit Pricing

• Spreads, commissions and fees
• Credit pricing models
• Probability of default
• Exposure at default
• Loss given default

The Role of Investment Banks - Securities Distribution

• Market-making
• Trading
• Broking
• Custody
• Prime brokerage
• Operations

The Role of Regulatory Bodies - Risk Management

• Front office perspective
• Middle office perspective
• Back office / operations perspective

Case Study: Why did the Fed save Bear Stearns and let Lehman go?

Exercise: Analysing a simple structured product from the perspectives of issuer, arranger and investors

Case Study: A comparison of the structure and activities of major investment banks

Demystifying the Core Principles

• Economic theory
• Generic pricing principles in practice
• Efficient markets hypothesis
• Discounted cash flow
• The approximate value of a trade
• The precise value of a trade
• Long and short positions

Understanding Capital Markets Research and Analysis

• Fundamental analysis
• Technical analysis
• Weak and strong random walks through the markets
• Index tracking
• Absolute returns and benchmarks

Getting to Grips with the Core Products

• Equity
• Bonds, notes and bills
• Convertibles
• Loans
• CDs and CP
• Structured products

Equity Capital Markets

The Mechanics of Origination

• IPOs
• Private placements
• Pre-emption rights
• General cash offers
• Stock splits
• Scrip issues

The Practicalities of Syndication

• The value of syndication
• Syndicate selection
• Syndicate structure
• Global syndicates
• Fees, commissions and selling concessions

Understanding Primary Trading

• Bookbuilding
• Block trades/bought deals
• Fixed price - underwritten
• Fixed price - best efforts
• Auctions/tenders

Case Study: VA Linux

• Secondary Trading
• Market making
• Structure of the books
• Hedging
• Liquidity

Case Study: Vivendi

Capital Market Sales

• Client coverage
• Competition
• Institutional sales
• Retail sales

Case Study: Lastminute.com

The Rationale for Structuring

• Investor demand
• Market conditions
• Regulatory constraints
• Institutional requirements
• Private clients' requirements

Case Study: Capital protected/equity upside note

Floating Rate Finance in the Syndicated Loan Market

• Origination
• Distribution
• Pricing
• League tables
• Reciprocity
• Frequent borrower desks
• Return on equity
• Documentation
• Secondary market and the SLMA
• Rate setting and settlement

Group Exercise: Participants will summarise, through group discussion, the advantages and disadvantages of the syndicated loan market from the perspective of the lending banks

Floating Rate Note Issues

• Origination
• Sales
• Pricing
• League tables
• Reciprocity
• Bank credit
• Return on equity
• Documentation
• Secondary markets and the market makers

Group Exercise: Participants will examine the roles of originators pitching for a mandate for a new issue to an existing FRN issuer, highlighting the importance of the pricing mechanism.

Fixed Rate Bond Issues

• Origination
• Sales
• Pricing
• League tables
• Reciprocity
• Institutional investors
• Benchmarking
• Documentation
• Secondary markets and the market makers
• Settling the trade - DVP
• Clearing houses

Recovery Rates

• Equity
• Subordinated debt
• Senior unsecured
• Senior secured
• The equity risk premium

The Mechanics of Bond Pricing

• Theoretical relationship between bond and equity prices
• Approximating bond prices from coupons and yields
• Approximating yields from coupons and prices
• Relationship between yields and recovery rates

Exercise: Participants will approximate bond prices and yields in order to demonstrate their understanding of the price/yield and credit spread/recovery rate relationships

Understanding the Yield Curve

• Using the yield to maturity
• Spot curves
• Forward curves
• Constructing a zero coupon curve
• Discount factors
• Calculating forward prices
• Influences on forward prices
• Relative position of the forward curve
• Forwards and expectations
• Bond market arbitrage

Case Study: Cash and carry arbitrage/covered interest arbitrage and the money and FX markets

The Origination Process

• Role of the arranger/lead manager/bookrunner
• The borrower's all-in-cost
• The investor's yield to maturity

Benchmarking

• Shorting the government market
• Identifying the credit spread
• Liquidity issues
• Other popular benchmarks

Fixed Income Credit Pricing

• Comparables
• Financials
• Sector analysis
• Investor demand
• Ratings
• Bond prices and yields
• Sensitivity and duration

Group Exercise: Participants will examine the role of the bookrunner and the swap counterparty in a fixed rate bond issue

The Swaps Market

• Hedging
• Risk management & trading
• Capital adequacy

Exercise: Calculating investor returns

How Swaps Work in Practice

• Risk
• Identifying cash flows
• The first leg of a swap
• The second leg of a swap
• Funding differentials and credit arbitrage
• Origination and liability swaps
• Asset swaps and institutional sales

Swap Market Quotations and Calculations

• Discounted cash flow
• Bond pricing and swap pricing
• Using maturity rates
• Using forwards and zeros
• Money, swap and bond market conventions

Case Study: Valuing bond & swap cash flows

Market Making, Trading and Structuring Swaps

• Using currency swaps
• How basis swaps work
• Matching cash flows
• Creating par/par structures
• Unwinding, terminating and assigning swaps
• Mark-to-market techniques

Case Study: Marking swaps to market

Getting to Grips with Options

• Call options
• Put options
• Trading strategies
• Intrinsic value
• Time value

Exercise: Option pricing - a relative approach

Case Study: Pricing and hedging callable bonds

Exercise: Valuing interest rate options

Case Study: Long/short gamma analysis

Asset and Liability Management

• Changing an investor's portfolio mix
• Managing a multi-currency debt portfolio

Case Study: Using options and swaps as a borrower and as an investor

Capital Markets Arbitrage Techniques

• Credit pricing
• Credit pricing in the loans markets
• Credit pricing in the bond markets
• New issue arbitrage
• Frequent borrower desks revisited
• Borrowers targets
• Cross market origination

Group Exercise: Participants will examine the opportunities offered to the large borrowers and their investment bankers by the existence of credit arbitrage

Credit Pricing

• Default probability
• Recovery rates
• Bonds
• Loans

Credit Default Swaps and Options

• Credit events
• The language of default
• Basis risk
• Materiality
• Case study

Total Rate of Return Swaps

• Funding Arbitrage
• Leverage
• Creating synthetic assets
• Case study

Credit Linked Notes

• Credit default linked notes
• Credit sensitive notes
• Index linked notes
• Collateralised Loan Obligations (CLO)
• Case study

A Practical Guide to Securitisation

• Structure
• Benefits to the issuer
• Benefits to investors
• Impact on bankers and bondholders

Case Study: Participants will examine the securitisation of car loans, mortgages, bank loans and music royalties

Compliance and Risk Management Issues

• Market risks
• Credit Risk
• Interest rate risk
• Operational risks
• Self-regulation - lessons from LTCM?
• Role of the regulators - lessons from Barings?

Capital Adequacy Implications

• Impact of leverage
• Basel I
• Basel II

Getting to Grips with Hedge Funds

• Hedge fund regulations and structures
• The importance of leverage
• Long/short funds
• Convertible bond arbitrage funds

Research and Analysis

• Structure of the fund management industry
• Role of analysts
• 'Soft' dollars
• Elliot Spitzer, Henry Blodget and Jack Grubman

Venture Capital and Private Equity

• The investment process
• Evaluating business plans
• Valuing businesses
• Financing structures
• Angels
• MBOs
• MBIs
• IBOs

Five reasons why you must attend this course:

1. It has been specially designed by an industry expert enabling you understand the drivers, mechanics and techniques essential for success in today’s volatile international marketplace
2. You will benefit from in-depth market focused tuition designed to optimise your skills and increase your effectiveness within all aspects of the international capital markets
3. The residential nature of the course enables you to be completely immersed in this subject
4. You will get more detail incorporated here than on any other capital markets course, highlighting structural techniques and mistakes previously made
5. It is tailored specifically to your needs. Intensive coverage and case studies will focus on the industries and sectors that YOU choose with a particular emphasis on practical applications