Rising above the doom and gloom, thankfully we have the return of the interesting, witty and creative marketing campaign that the structured products industry is so famed for. Without competition from the moribund structured finance industry, which has almost acronymed itself into an early grave, the fight back begins.
And it’s Merrill Lynch that is leading the way, with Mast. If you want to know what the acronym stands for then read yesterday’s story on Structured Products News, but if you want to get the theme, here goes.
Using the word Mast allows Merrill to justifiably put an old-fashioned tea clipper on the cover of all their marketing material. Although the product has yet to find its way to a launch (no pun intended, but happily found) in the UK market, all that sailing from the Olympics on the TV will have helped the cause. And all the talk of commodities, which were first transported in size in these kind of ships, will have also added a following wind (pun intended).
In straitened times, it is this kind of creativity that will restore order to damaged financial markets. Back to what the acronym stands for. It stands for everything: equity, fixed income (or just bonds), commodities and currencies. So it covers the whole gamut of what structured products can reasonably and regularly offer.
While we ponder more headlines in our attempt to match this refreshing rush of SP-style marketing, we await also your offerings. The usual answers taped to a bottle of champagne are gratefully accepted.