In Brief: Moody's Offers Primer on Structured Notes

Moody's Investors Service has released what it calls a "primer" on the "mysterious world" of structured notes.

In the report, senior analyst Joseph M. Pimbley and managing director Daniel A. Curry, describe the basic workings of the most popular structures.

These include floating-rate notes, callable notes, step-up callable notes, inverse floaters, corridor notes, gold forward notes, and index amortizing notes.

The authors also analyze "wolf in sheep's clothing" notes and "immature at maturity" notes.

Structured notes are widely held in the banking industry.

The authors point out that the notes can fall into any of three categories: coupon linked, principal linked, and extension linked.

Notes that incorporate more than one of these structures tend to be the riskiest, the authors say.

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