Floating rate notes. The structure and functioning of the instrument

Abstract

The floating rate notes appear in capital markets during inflation. They make it possible for their issuers to gain capital because they largely reduce severe price risk resulting from an increase in interest rates. However, the largely eliminated price risk transforms into interest risk resulting from changes in reference interest rates. A protection against this risk is capfloaters in the case of issuers, and floorfloaters in the case of investors. Specific conditions of the capital market, in which issuers and investors operate, are in turn the reason why different variants of floating rate notes are issued, which have the characteristics of speculative instruments. Examples of such bonds are reverse floaters and leveraged floaters.