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help needed: one confusing problem

An insurance company has approached your firm with the following problem. A $100 million global equity portfolio is to be invested with the goal of outperforming the S& 500 in US dollars without taking substantial risk. Your firm has offered to issue the insurer a three-year note with a 4.0% coupon (paid semi-annually) with a maturity value of the greater of the original amount or the ratio of the S& 500 at maturity to the current S& 500 times the original value of the note. For example, if the S& 500 has a beginning value of 1200 and an ending value of 1560 at the end of three years, the insurance company would receive $130 million and semi-annual interest payments of $2 million each.

Having promised the above, your boss turns to you and says, “Make it happen.” Your job is to use a combination of derivatives to make sure that your firm can carry out its promise without losing any money.

Additional facts:

  • The global equity portfolio has a Beta of 1.0 with the Morgan Stanley EAFE index.
  • An unrelated firm has offered you a one year swap agreement where you pay the EAFE return and receive LIBOR.
  • The portfolio is 50% invested in US (dollar) stocks, 25% in European (Euro) stocks and 25% in Japanese (Yen) stocks. You want all returns to be in US dollars.
  • The current LIBOR rate, spot and derivative prices are as posted in the Wall St Journal.
  • You can earn a 0.5% annual fee for lending the stocks in the portfolio to short sellers.

Do your best to arrive at a combination of derivatives that will accomplish these goals and to ensure that your company can fulfill its promise. Give an approximate value of each derivative in your portfolio.

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