transcription, транскрипция: [ ˈmetsəni:n ]
adjective (Business World) In financial jargon: representing an intermediate form of finance, debt, etc. between two more established or traditional ones. Used especially in: mezzanine debt, debt consisting of unsecured loans (intermediate between secured loans and equity), usually as a component of a management or leveraged buyout (compare junk debt at junk bond); mezzanine finance (or funding), either the financing of a leveraged buyout using subordinated or unsecured debt or, in companies financed by venture capital, the final round of funding before the company's public flotation (intermediate in seniority between the venture capital financing and bank financing). Etymology: A figurative use of mezzanine, which was originally a noun meaning 'a storey of a building between two others', but which was so commonly used attributively (in mezzanine floor etc.) that it came to be reinterpreted as an adjective meaning 'intermediate between two floors or levels'. History and Usage: The fashion for mezzanine finance arose in US financial markets in the late seventies or early eighties, and was widely discussed when financier Michael Milken of investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert persuaded institutional investors to take the risk of junk bonds in return for the high yield that they offered. In 1983 the Charterhouse Group launched a Mezzanine Fund specifically to provide the mezzanine finance for corporate buyouts. In some of its uses, mezzanine is simply a more official synonym for junk. Others, such as Seragen in Hopkinton, Mass., raised seed money easily but now find venture capitalists 'more discriminating' when investing in a 'mezzanine', or third, funding round. Scientific American June 1988, p. 92 The Citicorp fund will be dollar-based and provide mezzanine debt for deals led by the group both inside and outside the United States. Daily Telegraph 16 Aug. 1988, p. 21