Published in the Journal of Derivatives, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 61-70, 2011.

Principal Protected Absolute Return Barrier Notes (ARBNs) are structured products that guarantee to return the face value of the note at maturity and pay interest if the underlying security’s price does not vary excessively.

The SLCG study derives four closed-form valuation approaches which are considered as representative methodologies on valuing structured products. The approaches are: 1) decomposing an ARBN’s payoff into double-barrier linear segment options, 2) decomposing an ARBN’s payoff into double-barrier call and put options, 3) transforming an ARBN’s path-dependent payoff rule into a path-independent payoff rule which significantly simplifies the derivation of product value, and 4) using PDE (Partial Differential Equations) to model an ARBN’s payoff and calculate its value. The study shows the four methodologies to value 214 publicly-listed ARBNs issued by six different investment banks. Most of the products are linked to indices such as the S&P 500 Index and the Russell 2000 Index.

The study finds that the ARBNs’ fair price is approximately 4.5% below the actual issue price. Each of the ARBN’s fair price is stable across all four valuation methodologies.

Published in the PIABA Bar Journal, 21 (1): 71-90, 2014.

From May 8, 2000 until June 30, 2007, the UBS Willow Fund was invested in distressed obligations with offsetting but smaller cash and synthetic short debt positions through credit default swaps (CDS). After June 2007 the Fund dramatically increased its purchases of CDS and became massively short distressed debt. Investors in the Fund lost $278.4 million during this second period from June 2007 to December 2012 and the Willow Fund was liquidated in 2013.

The Willow Fund understated the risk of its CDS portfolio and did not disclose the dramatic increase in the Fund’s risks. In fact, the Willow Fund stopped reporting the CDS premiums it paid as a line item expense and thereafter bundled them with realized and unrealized gains on losses on its overall securities and derivatives portfolio making it nearly impossible for investors to discern the impact of the Fund’s change in strategy and dramatic increase in risk. Investors in the Willow Fund suffered losses of between $351 million and $419 million compared to diversified portfolios of junks bonds while UBS made over $100 million selling and managing the Fund.

Published in the PIABA Bar Journal, 20 (2): 191-206, 2013.

Retail investors are being sold increasingly obscure non-conventional investments. With the Priority Senior Secured Income Fund (PSSI), issuers may have finally gone too far. PSSI is the first registered investment company that invests primarily in leveraged loans and CLOs. Unlike the mutual funds with which most retail investors are familiar, PSSI investors are not able to redeem shares daily at PSSI’s net asset value. PSSI is not listed on an exchange and traded like a closed-end fund and so investors will have neither an observable market price nor any opportunity to sell shares in the secondary market.

PSSI, like other non-traded investments, is an extremely high cost offering. Its upfront fees of at least 9% and annual fees of over 8%, in addition to the high cost of its underlying structured finance investments, require persistently high returns on its portfolio to generate a positive internal rate of return for fund investors. The increased risks borne by investors to generate that return are complex and are not likely to be appreciated by brokers or retail investors.