Mezzanine Financing: Tools, Applications and Total Performance

Preface

For years now, for one and a half decades in fact, I have been engaged in the mezzanine world as an academic, trainer, consultant and as an entrepreneur/investor. Although nothing can replace practice and experience, it is the many students and practitioners I have met in my programs and courses, as well as the many business situations which triggered open-ended questions, that ultimately motivated me to write the book you now have in front of you.

During all those years the mezzanine finance world has changed a lot; it has grown significantly, boundaries have become blurred and financial innovations have made the spectrum more fragmented than before. Not surprisingly, many students and young professionals have wondered if they really understood what was going on, and when it was appropriate to use these products in a variety of situations thrown at them in their professional careers. They wondered which type of product to use and when, what the short and long-term impact would be for their firm, how to legally construct these products and, most importantly, how much risk there would be in each of these products, and therefore what a realistic and meaningful return would be given the risks involved. Some of them ended up in a vicious circle of self-repeating and self-reinforcing questions.

In my students' battle to embrace the dynamics of the product group and assess the adequateness of each product, their eagerness and uncertainty forced me to be clearer and more transparent ...