Leveraged Finance Books

As part of my SA stint, I get to spend 8 weeks on M&A and a week with the lev fin group - unfortunately, I know next to nothing about leveraged finance.

Are there any good resources or books that might help me become better informed about the leveraged finance area?

34 Comments
 

Vault has a Guide to Leveraged Finance. If your school does not have access to it, you can get it:

http://www.amazon.com/Vault-Career-Guide-Leveraged-Finance/dp/158131502…

It seems a little pricey. You may want to look at ebay or get an e-version.

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the vault guide is excellent. great overview of the different functions, tasks, the investment process & typicak work day in a lev fin team. a couple of weeks ago there was a post about that particular guide with someone offering to email it to ppl if they PMed him. hope that helps.

 

Distressed Debt by Moyer is a great book for anyone interested in debt investing, in my opinion.

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I've found Wiley's range of products to be very reliable and among the best when it comes to education. This particular book looks quite decent too but when all else fails, try before you buy:

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=gvcZyXTlP5AC&dq=leveraged+finance+c…+trading+of+high-yield+bonds+loans+and+derivatives&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=axR1UJIdAl&sig=UESosM-Q662ZeBOXcF95IQg2de0&HL=en&ei=0eYBS9-PK4PitQOxkMG9DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAwQ6AEwAQ

(Just be sure not to waste your limited preview on the title, TOC, publishing info etc...)

 

the lbo section of the investment banking book

also keep up to date on the lbos, dividend recaps and high yield financing transactions occurring in the market as they contain a good amount of data

if you work in bb/trading, reach out to the LevFin banking / Capital Markets Group for their market overviews and see if they have any primers they can provide to you

at the end of the day, nothing beats on the job training

------------ I'm making it up as I go along.
 
Best Response

Get the S&P LCD Wire from someone on the desk. They put out daily, weekly and quarterly reports on new issues, refins, LBOs, secondary activities. Good way to get a sense of where the market is pricing things and what leverage levels are do-able in current market conditions. Thats precisely what I did before an interview and I killed it because I told them exactly where an LBO would be pricing, what levels of leverage it could handle through each tranche of debt, minimum equity contributions etc... and give examples of how that varies across high/lower leverage levels, MM vs. large deals, etc... if you don't have a LevFin background and bust that out in an interview its like fishing with dynamite.

I'd recommend reaching out to someone in LevFin, DCM, HF or other sort of FI trading desk to get a few recent reports.

www.lcdcomps.com

If you're really clever you can actually get access to the entire news wire without a subscription. But I'm not going to share that so don't PM me.

 

I am having a hard time finding the blurb for the LBO's in LCD Wire, could you possibly provide some more direction?

Thanks!

 

2010: ton of dividend recap, white hot HY and LL markets due to opportunistic refinancings, investors looking for yield, risk trade back on, and M&A/sponsor activity (LBOs, recaps, secondaries).

2011: has continued albeit not to the extent of 2010 - volatility in equity markets has somewhat tempered the pipeline (HY much more correlated to ECM than traditional inv-grade DCM or more, T-bills/"Risk-free" debt). Still low rates, optimism.

 

leveragedfinancenews.com is pretty decent (you can get pricing and leverage levels) and you can sign up for a free trial, but LCD is best...

 

How easy is it to get a login and password? I'm just trying to read up on this stuff and don't know anybody who has access to it...

 

The first book will walk you through cash flow modeling, but nothing specific to LevFin FYI and in the same vein the book I'd recommend to get comfortable with debt is Steven Moyer's Distressed Debt Analysis. Again, not LevFin specific, but probably essential in helping you gain a 'critical mass' of related knowledge.

PM me for a copy.

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