SPECIAL PURPOSE VEHICLE:

A special purpose entity (SPE; or, especially in Europe, special purpose vehicle/SPV) is a legal entity (usually a limited company of some type or, sometimes, a limited partnership) created to fulfill narrow, specific or temporary objectives. SPEs are typically used by companies to isolate the firm from financial risk. A company will transfer assets to the SPE for management or use the SPE to finance a large project thereby achieving a narrow set of goals without putting the entire firm at risk. SPEs are also commonly used in complex financings to separate different layers of equity infusion. In addition, they are commonly used to own a single asset and associated permits and contract rights (such as an apartment building or a power plant), to allow for easier transfer of that asset. Moreover, they are an integral part of public private partnerships common throughout Europe which rely on a project finance type structure.

A special purpose entity may be owned by one or more other entities and certain jurisdictions may require ownership by certain parties in specific percentages. Often it is important that the SPE not be owned by the entity on whose behalf the SPE is being set up (the sponsor). For example, in the context of a loan securitization, if the SPE securitization vehicle were owned or controlled by the bank whose loans were to be secured, the SPE would be consolidated with the rest of the bank's group for regulatory, accounting, and bankruptcy purposes, which would defeat the point of the securitization. Therefore many SPEs are set up as 'orphan' companies with their shares settled on charitable trust and with professional directors provided by an administration company to ensure that there is no connection with the sponsor.

USES: Some of the reasons for creating special purpose entities are: Securitization: SPEs are commonly used to securitize loans (or other receivables). For example, a bank may wish to issue a mortgage-backed security whose payments come from a pool of loans. However, to ensure that the holders of the mortgage-back securities have the first priority right to receive payments on the loans, these loans need to be legally separated from the other obligations of the bank. This is done by creating an SPE, and then transferring the loans from the bank to the SPE.

Risk sharing: Corporate may use SPEs to legally isolate a high risk project/asset from the parent company and to allow other investors to take a share of the risk.

Finance: Multi-tiered SPEs allow multiple tiers of investment and debt.

Asset transfer: Many permits required to operate certain assets (such as power plants) are either non-transferable or difficult to transfer. By having an SPE own the asset and all the permits, the SPE can be sold as a self-contained package, rather than attempting to assign over numerous permits.

For competitive reasons: For example, when Intel and Hewlett-Packard started developing IA-64 (Itanium) processor architecture, they created a special purpose entity which owned the intellectual technology behind the processor. This was done to prevent competitors like AMD accessing the technology through pre-existing licensing deals.

Financial engineering: SPEs are often used in financial engineering schemes which have, as their main goal, the avoidance of tax or the manipulation of financial statements. The Enron case is possibly the most famous example of a company using SPEs to achieve the latter goal.

Regulatory reasons: A special purpose entity can sometimes be set up within an orphan structure to circumvent regulatory restrictions, such as regulations relating to nationality of ownership of specific assets.

Property investing: Some countries have different tax rates for capital gains and gains from property sales. For tax reasons, letting each property be owned by a separate company can be a good thing. These companies can then be sold and bought instead of the actual properties, effectively converting property sale gains into capital gains for tax purposes.