EURIBOR reset

As the chart shows, the company s unhedged cost is simply 1% over EURIBOR, reflecting the company s 1% credit margin. With the collar in place, the company s borrowing costs are unaffected when EURIBOR resets in-between the strike rates of 2.59% and 4%. This is because the collar has a zero cost, and neither the cap nor the floor are exercised when EURIBOR stays within this range. If, however, EURIBOR exceeds 4%, the cap compensates the company for the excess interest paid, capping the effective cost at 5%. Similarly, if EURIBOR fixes below 2.59%, the company s borrowing costs are floored at 3.59%. 

In contrast to a conpon rate that remains unchanged for the bond s entire life, a floating-rate security or floater is a debt instrument whose coupon rate is reset at designated dates based on the value of some reference rate. Thus, the coupon rate will vary over the instrument s life. The coupon rate is almost always determined by a coupon formula. For example, a floater issued by Aareal Bank AG in Denmark (due in May 2007) has a coupon formula equal to three month EURIBOR plus 20 basis points and delivers cash flows quarterly. 

Floating-rate notes (FRNs) are Eurobonds that have their coupon levels reset periodically, with reference to a money market rate. For dollar-denominated assets, this is LIBOR (the London Inter-bank Offer Rate) as determined by a group of 16 reference banks. The mechanism is run by the British Bankers Association (BBA). The BBA also supervises LIBOR fixings in a number of other currencies. For euros, the most common reference rate is EURIBOR, as determined by a reference group of around 50 banks chosen by European Banking Federation. In both cases, most issues are priced off of the three-month rate, although one-month and six-month rates are also used. 

For example, suppose the ratchet cap initially had a strike rate of 3%, and a spread of 50 bp. So long as EURIBOR stayed below 3%, the caplets would expire out-of-the-money, and the strike rate would remain at 3%. The first time that EURIBOR sets above 3%, however, the expiring caplet would result in a payment to the owner of the cap, but the strike rates for all the remaining caplets would be reset to 3.5%. The cap would therefore not pay out again until rates rose to this higher level, whereupon the strike rate would be ratcheted up to 4%, and so on. 

Let s now turn our attention to look at situations where interest rate options are used to hedge against changes in interest rates. To illustrate this, we will consider the case of a company that is borrowing 10 million at 6-month EURIBOR plus 1% for a 5-year period, with the interest rate reset every six months. The floating rate for the first period has just... 

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