What does a syndicate desk do?
A syndicate desk or syndicate team is a team of people involved in performing research, marketing, pricing loans, stocks, and companies’ bonds. They play a significant role in mobilizing finances and other company tasks, especially when the company launches a new deal to market.
If your company is planning to launch or issue a new financial deal to roll out in the market, you have to take the help of your syndicate desk.
When the research document is ready, the team submitted it to the company intending to launch the new deal.
What is a syndicate?
A syndicate is a self-organizing group of individuals, companies, corporations, or entities formed to transact some specific business, to pursue or promote a shared interest. By definition, a syndicate a group of people who need to do tasks that would be difficult or impossible, to effect individually.
How to work syndicate desk with other teams?
The syndicate desk has to work closely with the credit deviating desk, swaps desk, MTN desk, sales force, and investors. It also has to keep a careful watch on the secondary market, issuers, and research. Thus, the syndicate desk works with many teams. Each of the teams deals with a complex, specialized task.
Syndicate desk related activities
Mobilization of loans
The syndicate desk is usually responsible for formulating the plan to float syndicated loans. However, this is not the only role that it plays. Readers may be aware a syndicated loan is one mobilized by a bank through many capital surplus lenders.
The purpose of syndicate loans
The Syndicate deals are meant for financing bigger deals. The individual investor’s risk comes down significantly by expanding the base of the loan across several entities.
The task to trace and locate the lender is vested with the syndicate desk team. Now, it executes this task by estimating the loan terms through the necessary market research.
How does the syndicate desk work with other teams?
The syndicate desk has to work in coordination with other teams in the organization. The process involves origination, sale, and trading loans.
Origination: The process of origination involves working with credit and coverage teams. The process involves specialist functionality performed accordingly to the guidelines on market conditions, price, trends expectation, pitching guiding, and the like.
Syndicate and sales: The two teams (sales desk and syndicate desk) can perform unexpectedly. However, the sales desk has a better grip on how the market behaves.
A deal may involve an open market. It could also put a cap on banks’ lists or whitelists where the issuer plays a significant role.
Trading in loans: The syndicate desk is responsible for executing tasks in tandem with loan trading (for the outstanding loans) and optimizing the bank’s portfolio. Many banks operate based on the origination and distribution model. It’s also important to note that they operate on the trading book as well.
Conclusion
The syndicate desk is a team of professionals that functions synergistically with other teams in the organization. It’s a team that can make mar the process of mobilizing the market in favor of the organization. It’s for this reason that financial entities lay great emphasis on such teams.
