Bond

“bond” as explained to my neighbor Phil

A bond (also called a “note”, “MTN” or a “debt security”) is a form of loan. It is like an IOU from a company or a government. Instead of taking one big loan from a bank, a company issues lots of little loans, in the form of bonds to investors. To buy a bond is to lend money to the issuing company, who must repay that money by “redeeming” the bond its stated maturity date. In the good old days, bonds were security-printed certificates with the loan terms and conditions printed on them. Repayment to bearer: The company will pay principal and interest to the “bearer” of a bond — that is, whoever holds it, and who turns up on the correct payment date and presents the bond to the issuer for redemption. Interest coupons: If interest is payable, the bond will have coupons — literally, little perforated tabs that you can tear off and present separately — for each interest payment. Hence the expression “coupon” has become synonymous in modern finance with interest. Transferability: Because the issuer pays whoever holds the bond, this means the bond is negotiable — any bondholder can sell its bond to another investor without the issuer’s permission or knowledge. The issuer doesn't care: it has to redeem the same number of bonds, whoever holds them. Electronic trading: Nowadays, almost all bonds trade and settle electronically, inside clearing systems, so there are no certificates or coupons, and everything happens in the blink of an eye. But the principle is the same.

Financial concepts my neighbour Phil was asking about when I borrowed his mower.

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Edit A bond is a debt security, traditionally bearing a fixed rate of interest, and issued as a stand-alone (rather than off an MTN programme). Compare with a note — which traditionally bears interest at a floating rate, and a medium term note, which can be fixed, floating or structured with all kinds of exotic derivative payoffs, but is issued from a medium term note programme, rather than as a stand-alone issue.

Contrast all those debt securities to equity securities — instruments such as shares, warrants units, which pay neither principal nor interest, but rather account for the overall performance of the company who issue them.

Debt securities generally rank ahead of equity securities in the capital structure of the issuer. This is because an issuer must pays off creditors before shareholders.