Hi guys, i have a banking paralegal interview with Dentons, specifically within derivatives. If anyone has any insight into the world of derivatives, the types of work trainees within this practice area would do, or any general insights, this would be really appreciated!!
Wouldn't this involve corporate finance and possibly debt shifting (as companies often rely on the bias towards debt in the majority of tax systems as well as on interest deductibility in order to minimise their income liabilities, i.e. payments on interest can be deducted from taxable profits while payments on equity, such as dividends, cannot, and companies often rely on debt financing for tax purposes. Likewise, derivatives are used by corporations for financing/tax planning strategies: there are certain derivatives, such as warrants or subordinated debt, that have the characteristics of both debt and equity and therefore tax systems do not really know how to tax them (tax systems have certain prescribed "cubbyholes" into which intruments would typically fall, but this is not usually the case when it comes to certain derivatives, as they blur the traditional legal distinctions on which tax systems rely). Moreover, derivatives can mimic the economic substance of other underlying financial assets (they can "convert" debt into equity and vice versa), again for tax planning purposes. I don't know what trainees in banking would specifically do, but it might be related to the above.