Download Practical Special Purpose Vehicles

WORKHOP OUTLINE
Practical Special Purpose Vehicles: the widespread role and functions of SPVs in
everyday business transactions (including their uses and abuses)
- William I.Y. Byun
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I.
Special purpose vehicles (SPVs) are everywhere in the business world at all levels of deals from
plain vanilla construction projects to complex cross-border tax schemes.
They are a widespread and critical structuring component utilized for organizational structuring
and for functional financial roles in modern investment and financial management practice,
ranging from pure tax optimization and management segregation roles to more controversial
roles such as opacity and financial manipulation.
This workshop will examine what the range of roles SPVs are utilized in, their rationale, and
some of their risks, ranging from use in everyday business transactions such as for project
management to darker roles such as in the Enron financial fraud.
Roles and Structures of SPVs – Overview (what are they and are they really a big deal?)
1. Current markets and key considerations
2. Benefits and legal and financial risks in using SPVs
3. Landscape
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Everyday Types and Uses of SPVs (what do they do and how can I use them?)
Use for functional roles
Standard project management
Asset securitizations
Private equity and investments structures
For shareholding and control purposes
For confidentiality and security
For tax and cross-border accounting planning
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SPVs and Risks (knowing the “Dark Arts”)
Non-transparency and non-linearity
Corporate structuring and shadow ownership
Catastrophic risks, compliance & KYC, corruption, money laundering
Enron revisited
III.
The Workshop will go through reviews of actual deal structures such as for major deals such as
Bougyues, Enron, Cibinong as well as for more everyday deals.
William I.Y. Byun is the Principal of the Conchubar Group’s US$ 100 million PE fund in Asia, focused on
industrial policy related infrastructure. He has more than 25 years practice in managing and developing
emerging markets investments and infrastructure projects, including in electric power, chemicals, and
climate change across Asia. He is also on the adjunct faculty at CSUSM for business.
He had started his practice in Wall Street with Seward & Kissel specializing in structured finance and
asset-backed securitization and has utilized SPVs for both asset ownership and offshore financing
structures. He had been the Managing Director for Renewables and Climate Change (for Asia and the
Middle East) for the NYSE-listed AES Corporation and CEO of RC Chemicals in Singapore.
A New York licensed attorney, William was a US Fulbright Scholar to the Ministry of Finance of Korea,
and had been with the Office of General Counsel with US OPIC. He has degrees from the University of
Chicago (BA, economics), University of Michigan (JD, law), and the University of London (SOAS and LSE,
Msc and Dipl., finance and sociology, respectively).