They would promote these to institutional investors with the following selling points although these were not always true: Deutsche Bank was generally considered the leader in this business, with Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and UBS all vying for business.
Prior to the 2007 financial crisis several Institutional clients and mid-cap corporates purchased products based on these strategies some with disastrous effect as they did not fully understand the risk involved.
[citation needed] Trades can be structured on these indices from the asset side or the liability for different types of institutions.
On the liability side these trades were aimed at corporate clients, such as midsize companies and banks looking for ways to service their loans.
A typical trade involves the corporate client paying Fixed – Leverage * Index Performance and receiving Libor + Spread to service their loan.