Financial Derivatives

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the swaps, or contracts for differences, defined as synthetic securities involving combinations of two or more basic building blocks, are one of several financial derivatives used either to hedge different financial risks, such as interest rate risks or currency/foreign exchange risks or to obtain financial gains when they are used as speculative instruments. The author points out that the main characteristic of financial derivatives is the fact that they all work on imperfections of the financial markets; swaps are obviously either a speculating or an arbitrage instrument, much like forwards, futures or options. The paper relates that a swap agreement is beneficial to both parties when there is a split preference for fixed or floating, induced either by the necessities of the organization or the risk management policies that the company adopts.

Table of Contents
Interest Rate Swaps
Currency Swaps
Asset Swaps

From the Paper:

"The figure above best explains a classical swap mechanism . Bank A has a AAA credit rating, while Bank B has a BBB credit rating. This means that Bank B will have a higher fixed rate loan and company II will prefer to loan by using variable or floating rates. These are generally reported to LIBOR and can be, in this case, LIBOR + 0.75 %. Company I will make fixed-rate loans from the AAA bank at a fixed rate of 10 %. The general idea is that bank A will make floating- rate payments to bank B, and, B will make fixed- rate payments to A. The rates that the swap bank uses enter the calculations as well."

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