A Pragmatist’s Guide to Leveraged Finance: Credit Analysis for Bonds and Bank Debt

2. Common Leveraged Finance Terms

What’s in this chapter:

• Definitions of some key terms, including common synonyms

• Terms used to describe prices and returns on debt instruments

• Key points relating to how bonds and loans trade

Like most specialties, from firefighting to neurosurgery, the leveraged finance market has its own lingo. This chapter outlines some key terms commonly used in the market and throughout this book. Some definitions are fairly generic to the securities business, and others are specific to or more widely used in only the leveraged finance market.

This industry often has several synonyms for the same word. Even the market itself goes by several names: leveraged finance, high yield, junk market. All these terms refer to ...