Understanding Interest Rate Swaps

Interest rate swaps--used globally by both corporate finance departments and investment firms to control interest payments, manage debt, and enhance investment portfolios--constitute a growing $1.9 trillion market. Now, financial personnel, swap traders, corporate treasurers, and professional cash managers can turn to this clear, authoritative guide to master all the methodologies used in the international swap market. Written for anyone whose work is touched by swap market activity, the guide uses diagramming techniques to first explain what swaps are, and how and why they are traded. It then addresses more sophisticated financial transactions, such as rate setting, analysis of swap desks, market-to-market, speculating, and financial statements. Readers will find detailed coverage of more than two dozen derivative products, including spreadlocks, swaptions, caps, and flows, and learn how swap trading works in foreign currencies and interest rates. Critical light is also shed on questions regulators are currently raising about the security and future of the swaps markets.