Dot-Com Flashback: The SPV

This is the third and final article in the “Dot-Com Flashback” series. In the first article, Financing the Customer, I covered how Cisco and others lent money to customers who could not pay, booked the sales as revenue, and called the manufactured demand real. In the second article, Capacity Swaps, I covered how companies such as Global Crossing and Qwest sold each other network capacity no one needed, booked both sides as revenue, and buried the cost across two decades of amortization.

Today we discuss a method that was commonly used during the Dot-Com era and is widely used today: the Special Purpose Vehicle.