Leading lights

As Structured Products magazine celebrates its fifth anniversary, the time is right to take a look back a mere 15-20 years to when it all began, and to interview a selection of 10 pioneers who created and fostered the business from its European beginnings, through to Asia and the Americas. Richard Jory talks to the innovators about their contributions and the development of structured products

The McDonald's burger bar at Liverpool Street in London and the more ritzy-sounding La Defense on the outskirts of Paris lie at the heart of structured products. The business was created there by financiers working into the night to create models that would make option pricing understandable and palatable to a retail investor audience.

There were other nerve centres, starting from convertible bonds desks in New York, servicing issuers of these bonds and warrants in Tokyo, also taking in Brussels