Semi-annual market

Journal of Water Borne Coatings Technology Marketing Corporation, 1 Technology Plaza, Norwalk CT 06854, (203) 852-6800. Founded 1978. Semi- annual. 

So we have formally introduced the notion of break-even inflation, a term at the heart of inflation-linked bond analysis and trading. In principle it is the rate of inflation that will equate the returns on an inflation-linked bond and a comparator nominal bond issue of the same term. In theory, calculating it by simply subtracting a real yield from a nominal yield is a crude form of a properly compounded calculation, particularly when bond market conventions are semi-annual and what you should want is an annual measure of inflation. 

The gilts market is primarily a plain vanilla market, and the majority of gilt issues are conventional fixed interest bonds. Conventional gilts have a fixed coupon and maturity date. By volume they made up 82% of the market in June 2002. Coupon is paid on a semi-annual basis. The coupon rate is set in line with market interest rates at the time of issue, so the range of coupons in existence reflects the fluctuations in market interest rates. Unlike many government and corporate bond markets, gilts can be traded in the smallest unit of currency and sometimes nominal amounts change hands in amounts quoted down to one penny ( 0.01) nominal size. 

When the rates have been established they must then be calibrated. The calibration procedure is achieved using the observed market price of a bullet government bond and pricing the bond using the tree calculated rates to obtain the appropriate discount factors. As an example, consider a government bond trading at par and offering a coupon of 4.625% paid semi-annually. On maturity the bond will be redeemed for 102.3125, which is made up of the bond s face value, say 100, and one half of the annual coupon, 2.3125. 

While our illustrations assume that the timing of the cash flows for both the fixed-rate payer and floating-rate payer will be the same, this is rarely the case in a swap. An agreement may call for the fixed-rate payer to make payments annually but the floating-rate payer to make payments more frequently (semi-annually or quarterly). Also, the way in which interest accrues on each leg of the transaction differs, because there are several day count conventions in the fixed-income markets as discussed in Chapter 3. 

Bioethanol is one of the first and the largest markets to profit from cheap biomass feedstock. Ethanol is usually produced from dextrose, which in the USA tends to derive from corn. The first ethanol biorefmery based on waste biomass is already online. It is a Canadian venture operated by Iogen and receiving investment from Shell, Petro Canada, and the Canadian government. With an annual capacity of 700,000 liters it is semi-commercial in scale and not cost-competitive with conventional ethanol refineries. However, the technology is expected to improve quickly. 

The first commercial semi-synthetic antibiotic was ampicillin, which was introduced by Beecham in 1961,57L A few years later a new class of antibiotics, the cephalosporins, was marketed. Some of the semi-synthetic cephalosporins are prepared from 7-aminocephalosporanic acid (7-ACA), others from 7-aminodesace-toxycephalosporanic acid (7-ADCA). 7-ACA is an intermediate that can be obtained from the fermentation product cephalosporin C 7-ADCA is an intermediate that was discovered by Morin et al. 58 using chemical ring expansion of the penicillin nucleus (Fig. 12.2-4). The only difference between the two molecules is the absence of an acetoxy moiety in 7-ADCA. Today, the main intermediates for semi-synthetic cephalosporins (SSCs) and penicillins (SSPs), 7-ADCA and 6-APA, respectively, are produced in quantities of many thousands of tons annually in biocatalytic processes using penicillin amidases. 

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