As liberalization is gathering momentum, corporate treasures and merchant bankers are in the process of devising new products to suit the needs of investors and corporates. They are looking for something more than plain debt and equity instruments from the pack. The process of financial engineering involves creating new instruments and techniques by unpacking and rebundling the same characteristics in a different fashion to suit the ever changing needs of the issuers and investors.

The recent years have been witnessing the emergence of some innovative financial instruments in the Indian financial market.

Pure debt instruments have become almost forgotten instruments. The preference of the investors for equity to other fixed income investments has been the attractions of capital gains. Taking this cue, the companies formulated instruments with mixed features and varying attributes.