Synthetic Debt: Off-Balance-Sheet Corporate Finance for the Twenty-First Century

Executive Summary. Off-balance-sheet fixed-income financial obligations can arise in an efficiently regulated market environment. Recent advances in financial technology have resulted in a class of lease-based fixed-income products to finance off-balance-sheet corporate acquisitions of tangible assets. Such products as synthetic leases and synthetic debt enable corporations to lease assets and also benefit from any increase in asset valuation while the assets are under lessee control. Synthetic lease finance imposes a number of constraints in return for the off-balance-sheet benefit. By contrast, synthetic debt finance provides corporate financiers with cost and flexibility comparable to conventional senior corporate debt.