Liability Management: Tenders, Exchanges and Consent Solicitations

If debt were a pet, it would be the sort that looks harmless when you bring it home, then grows teeth and starts demanding attention at the worst possible time. Rising rates, cash squeezes, or a stack of bonds all maturing at once can make even well-run companies sweat.

That’s when issuers turn to liability management – a toolkit for taming their debt before it starts chewing through the furniture. The usual choices? Tender offers, exchange offers and consent solicitations. They sound technical (and they are), but in practice, they’re nothing more than strategies issuers use to wrestle back control of the capital structure.