Simone Bono
Simone Bono is a partner in Freshfields' high yield practice. She has extensive experience representing financial sponsors, underwriters and issuers in high yield bond offerings, leveraged buy-outs, debt restructurings and other corporate finance transactions. Before joining the firm, she practiced in New York for 10 years focusing on high-yield and other corporate finance transactions.
Practice Area
Panel
- Contributing Author
Qualification
- Admitted to practise in New York and Zurich.
Education
- LLM, New York University School of Law.
- Lic.iur, magna cum laude, University of Bern, Switzerland.
1 Contributions by Simone Bono
PRACTICE NOTES
Key features of investment-grade, high-yield and crossover bonds: yields, covenants, maturities, guarantees and regulatory considerations
What are investment-grade, high yield and crossover bonds?
Investment grade (IG) bonds are debt instruments that hold an IG credit rating: BBB and above on the S&P and Fitch scales, and Baa3 and above on the Moody’s scale (for further detail on credit ratings, see Practice Note: Credit ratings). IG issuers are usually sizeable blue‑chip corporates—well‑known, well‑established and well‑capitalised—and are often companies with shares listed on a major stock exchange. Aside from sovereign bonds of developed markets, IG securities are widely regarded as among the safest income‑generating investments. As a consequence of this perceived safety, IG bonds tend to offer lower yields than high yield (HY) bonds. Many institutional investors and pension schemes operate policies and mandates that constrain their bond holdings to assets with, on average, lower default risk, such as IG instruments or government obligations. In broad terms, HY bonds encompass all bonds from issuers rated below IG. HY issuers may include public companies that lack (or previously had but later lost) an IG rating, private companies or acquisition...
Banking & Finance
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