What are the step by step for raising debt/ equity

I have done a few banking interviews over the last two weeks (with small firms) and in two of these firms I was asked "how do you raise debt?" I do not do much in terms of actually raising the debt. I create decks, models, etc. but our MD is the one who takes my work, and takes it from there.

My question is, if someone were to ask, "Take me step by step through a debt/equity raise." How would you respond?

  1. Meet with client.
  2. Determine if they would like to raise debt or sell equity.
  3. Ask them how much they would like to raise.
  4. Create a financial forecast for the company for the next 5 years.
    5-...?

Thanks for any help or advice.

 
Best Response

lol...the company doesn't know anything. that's why they are paying you. projections what is the debt for / how much do they need how much can they afford / perm cap structure build interest / build a book / figure out pricing / launch the deal now figure out how to de-leverage them and do an equity deal (repeat the above but instead of leverage think of acc/dil)

 

Had some exposure to DCM during an internship. Little bit rusty on this but from what I can remember, the process for a debt raise in the form of IG bonds was the following:

  • DCM desks send regular pricing updates to clients. (Generic pricing updates for benchmark issues in ‘standard’ maturities – to give clients an idea of what their new issue curve might look like – as well as where in particular on the curve the client might be interested in, which currencies are cheap relative to the clients' domestic funding curve etc.)
  • Client will go back to some of the banks to ask for further insight into pricing etc. Syndicate gives their spiel of what’s going on in the market and what investors like at the moment etc.
  • Client decides which banks to mandate. All of the syndicate desks from those banks discuss the pricing they showed the client and then discuss strategy / initial price thoughts.
  • Go/no-go call with syndicate and client early next morning. If client gives go-ahead, announcement is put up on Bloomberg and sales desks at the mandated banks simultaneously hit their clients. Books opened.
  • Monitor how the book is going. Syndicate gives update to client. Client and syndicate decide how much to tighten pricing or whether to target size of issue. Update market. Repeat an hour or so later and then close the books.
  • Syndicate then jump on a call to allocate the book (i.e. how much of their order each investor gets and which investors get zeroed).
  • Investors moan to Sales that they only got x% of what they wanted.

Takeaways/impressions for me from IG DCM were i) lack of modelling and ii) hardly any ‘advisory’ work to the extent that the treasury teams at large corporates know – pretty much – exactly what they want.

 

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