Redefining equity-linked

Australia's equity-linked products market has traditionally been dominated by warrants and plain vanilla, tax efficient capital guaranteed funds. A wider variety of products has now emerged, but all tend to come under the label equity-linked securities

Before buying equity-linked securities in Australia, be sure to check the merchandise. There will very likely be nothing wrong with the product per se, but the label might be misleading, as the phrase 'equity-linked' is undergoing a semantic shift in the local market and means different things to different people.

In the structured products market, for example, the phrase is a hangover from the time products were predominantly linked to either equity stocks or indexes. In the past two years, the