Money for Nothing

Banks have become amazingly expert at packaging derivative products to look like money for jam. And its remarkable how many normally sound CFOs are being attracted by these offers, which really pack a sucker punch.
One particularly "attractive" structure doing the rounds is as follows:
The company and a bank enter into a swap for, say, Rs 50 crore, where the bank will pay the company Rs 50 crore plus 2.2 per cent (that's the Rs 1.1 crore for free, apparently) at the end of one year, while the company will pay the bank 13.27 million Swiss franc at the then prevailing market rate. …