CDOs are privately placed securities backed by pools of financial assets. CDO equity represents a residual claim on the cash flows from the assets collateralizing a CDO. Those assets could be leveraged loans, corporate bonds, residential mortgage loans, commercial mortgage loans, or something else (e.g., emerging market debt and trust-preferred securities).
A CDO redistributes cash flows from a set of assets to a series of notes. The cash flow structure is the most common type of CDO and will receive the bulk of this report’s attention. With this structure, cash flow coverage tests are based on asset par amounts. With the less common market value structure, coverage tests are based on asset market values. Synthetic structures, many of which forego coverage tests, are also quite common.
In funded synthetic CDOs, the collateral is a combination of credit default swaps (CDS) and high-quality assets. In cash flow structures, the mechanism that determines the allocation of cash flows is called a waterfall. Equity payments are last in priority, after liability payments, management fees and taxes. The residual cash flows available to pay equity can be diverted if interest and par coverage ratios fall below prescribed limits. Collateral losses due to default and trading losses will result in equity principal losses.
Because a CDO is collateralized by a pool of assets, a long equity position is similar in risk to a long position in the collateral and a short position in the senior notes. The senior note investors typically receive a fixed spread above LIBOR. Hence, equity is a matched funded position when the collateral is floating rate. The term funding structure implies that equity is also a nonrecourse, leveraged investment. Nonrecourse means the investment does not require additional funding other than what is originally tendered, regardless of how poorly the assets perform. Leveraged means the investor borrows money to purchase the security, presumably at a lower interest rate than the expected return on the investment. This allows investors to increase the potential return (but also the risk) of their investment.
Economics is conventionally divided into two types of analysis: microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics studies how individuals and firms allocate scarce resources, whereas macroeconomics analyses economywide phenomena, resulting from decision-making in all markets. One way to understand the distinction between these two approaches is to consider some generalised examples. Microeconomics is concerned with determining how prices, values and rents emerge and change, and how firms respond. It involves an examination of the effects of new taxes and government incentives, the characteristics of demand, determination of a firm’s profit, and so on. In other words, it tries to understand the economic motives of market participants such as landowners, developers, occupiers and investors. This diverse set of participants is rather fragmented and at times adversarial – but microeconomic analysis works on the basis that we can generalise about the behaviour of these parties. A particular branch of economics known as urban land economics is concerned with the microeconomic implications of scarcity and the allocation of urban property rights. Ball et al. (1998) in the preface to their book state that: ‘The microeconomics of commercial property, proved to be the most difficult [area] to draw together. There simply does not exist an adequate and complete general microeconomic theory of urban property markets.’ This is true and an attempt to develop such a theory is not attempted here! Instead this section brings together and explains the key microeconomic concepts and theories that have a bearing on urban property markets and the important work of authors such as Harvey (1981), Fraser (1993) and Myers (2006) in relating classical economic concepts and theories to urban land and property markets is acknowledged.
Competitive considerations have heavy and pervasive impacts on state policies. Concerns over non-competitive tax burdens translate into pressures to keep spending, and thus taxes, low. Concern over the effects of taxes on economically attractive, mobile taxpayers encourages states to minimize taxes on footloose firms, high-income households, and affluent retirees. Competition for economic development motivates huge outlays for industrial parks, sports stadiums, convention centers, highways, and other programs.
The Economic War Among The States: State officials are in constant economic competition with each other. Candidates for state offices campaign on platforms including promises of enhancing their state’s economic development — bringing more jobs, higher incomes, and fiscal dividends for state and local governments. They point with pride to signs of economic success such as statistics on increased employment and examples of new plants. They seek track records including not losing existing employers to the lures of other states, encouraging the growth of existing firms, and drawing new employers to their state. Their challengers leap on signs of failure such as high unemployment, plant closings, layoffs, and even losses of
professional sports teams. Business groups lobby states to eliminate signs of what they call a “poor business climate.”
The Competitive Environment: Interstate competition is based in the reality of the open economy which the U.S. Constitution guarantees to citizens of every state. It protects the rights of individuals to move to any state and enjoy the privileges of long-time residents. It permits firms from any state to sell in every state, free from tariffs and quotas, and subject to no higher taxes nor more stringent regulations than in-state firms. It permits firms to establish new plants anywhere and to abandon a state entirely for any reason — including dissatisfaction with policies of that state. Attempts by states to shelter their markets from interstate competition are consistently overturned by federal courts as violations of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.
Changes in technology and the nation’s economy have been increasing the impact of competitive factors on state policies and are likely to continue to do so. Reductions in the weight-to-value ratio of goods, in transportation costs and speed, and in communications cost have liberated producers from the need to be in close proximity to customers. Whole industries — beer, potato chips, dairy products, hardware vendors, and banks — have been shifting from locally based businesses to national firms. Deregulation of public utilities is reducing the ability of state and local governments to continue policies which have imposed disproportionate taxes on them.
There is strong evidence that decisions of firms to locate, expand, and remain in particular states are heavily influenced by state policies including state and local tax levels. Firms planning to establish new plants or contemplating moves routinely solicit competitive offers from states. There are many examples of firms relocating or deciding to put their new plants in different states because of home-state taxes they consider too high.
Nearly all states respond to these solicitations for offers to draw new plants, often with tax concessions tailored to the soliciting firm. But offering such concessions only to firms considering relocation produces criticisms of state officials for not pursuing even-handed policies. More important, it induces all footloose firms to consider moves if for no other reason than to induce concessions from home states.
The impact of interstate competition has been apparent in tax policy perceived as affecting firms’ location decisions. In legislative sessions in 1997 and each of the two previous years, at least 20 states passed legislation to reduce business taxes in some way in order to encourage economic development. In addition, nearly all states allow local officials to offer concessions reducing or eliminating local taxes. The changes in Tennessee taxes shown in the Tennessee Department Of Revenue paper Business Taxes: Current Structure And Options For Change are typical of the kinds of changes being made by most states.
Successive moves of this type suggest that taxation of footloose firms, particularly those in manufacturing, is gradually being reduced. State policies have been moving in the direction of ending: (1) sales taxes on equipment and supplies using in constructing new facilities, (2) property taxes on manufacturers’ inventories, machinery, and equipment, (3) for limited times, property taxes on new plants and expansions, and (4) corporate profit taxes associated with out-of-state sales. In addition, states are enacting special tax concessions for particular industries such as oil and gas exploration and production, processing of agricultural commodities, aircraft maintenance, banking, and insurance.