The Microfinance Collateralized Debt Obligation: A Modern Robin Hood?

The aim of this paper is to highlight a potentially very fruitful link between micro-entrepreneurs and international capital markets. It discusses the role structured finance and credit derivatives could play in extending finance to micro-entrepreneurs on a much larger scale than today's mainly non-commercial microfinance industry. The mechanisms of so-called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) are described and extended to the microfinance world. Finally, it hypothetical, but realistic, example of such a microfinance CDO (MiCDO) is used to discuss the implications of securitization and tranching of microcredits. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.