I am a convertible-bond-focused & multi-asset class capital markets practitioner across product origination/structuring and distribution. Twenty-five years principally in convertibles & equity-linked securities, and also corporate credit, hybrids, derivatives, at Morgan Stanley, BNP Paribas, J.P. Morgan and HVB/UniCredit.
Additional skills lanes include sustainable finance & climate adaptation research (particularly nature-based strategies) and AI adoption and implementation in capital markets work.
Convertible bonds
Corporates that have issued bonds generally refinance with new bonds at maturity. To that extent, corporate bonds establish a permanent place on balance sheets. This has not been the case for convertible bonds. Convertible bonds have often served as a temporary transition mechanism to equity or are structured as opportunistic, one-off financing. A few corporates have become repeat issuers of convertibles, but they are the exceptions to all corporates that have ever issued convertibles. In the mindset of most corporates, therefore, convertibles are designed to convert into equity (shares) or be paid off permanently, rather than being indefinitely rolled over with a new convertible. And yet, in practice, convertibles may or may not convert into equity, meanwhile offering issuers attractive coupon cost relative to the equivalent straight debt. This important nuance seems often lost in the prospective repeat issuer or first-time issuer corporate's security choice planning, instead often fixing attention on conversion and share dilution, rather than treating the conversion option purely as a mechanism to synthetically suppress the interest expense. Could convertibles establish a permanent place on a corporate's balance sheet and forge a pathway to permanent capital status?
Research is in the pipeline to consider this and other research questions on the factors driving the market's structure and size, capital flow dynamics and relative value analysis, as well as a broad review of convertible bonds in the literature.
Nature and climate adaptation
Why are mangrove wetlands still lost when their carbon and flood-protection value is high, and what finance and governance would change that? A Cayman Islands case study (preprint on SSRN) answers for one jurisdiction.
How do the property, insurance and credit markets of a small, low-elevation, high-income island price sea-level rise and storm risk, and ultimately the persistence of the island itself (terminal risk, as defined)? A comparative study of five islands against a selected control basket.
Why this site exists
This site is designed to encourage engagement and debate with me on the subjects highlighted and written about here. It is also a dated public record of my research in progress. Each research note states the question, the framing and the apparent gap the work tries to address, carries the date it was first set out, and links to a permanent archived copy with a DOI. The notes are summaries. Methods, data and results are published in the papers themselves.
Updates
- Research showcase: Climate adaptation in small island states, Energy & Environment seminar series, University of Cambridge. An event by the Energy Policy Research Group and the Centre for Space, Earth and Energy (CSEE). My contribution: Climate adaptation in small island states: a single case study of the Cayman Islands. Event page · Talks
- Research programme note Convertible bonds as permanent capital, and a review of the convertible bond literature since 2014 deposited on Zenodo, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23455869. Research note
- Research programme note Pricing terminal risk: the political economy of climate adaptation in five mini Earths deposited on Zenodo, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23455433. Research note
- Cayman Islands paper submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.
- Preprint of the Cayman Islands paper posted on SSRN, DOI 10.2139/ssrn.7581122.