The current price of stock in Company XYZ is $45 and no ex-dividend dates are to occur for the next three months. The risk-free rate is 4.00% per year. The standard deviation for the period in question is 0.4. You are a financial advisor and one of your best clients is Mr. John Smith who is a senior-level manager at a Fortune 500 company. A portion of Mr. Smiths incentive compensation is paid in restricted stock in the company he works for which he cannot sell for a period of three years from the date of the award of the shares. Smith has been employed at the company for 35 years and he has been in a senior position for the last 20 years. Mr. Smith has a concentrated equity position in the company owning 1,000,000 shares. More than 80% of his wealth is in the company stock. Assume that due to contractual obligations, he cannot sell his stock over the next three months. Due to his concentrated position, he wants to hedge against the price of XYZ stock falling more than 20%. He can do this by buying put options with a strike price of $36.

1. Assume that Mr. Smith does not have the necessary amount of liquid assets (other than his stock which he cannot sell) to be able to purchase these put options so he will have to enter into an equity collar. At what strike price should he strike the corresponding call options?

2. If Mr. Smith decides that he can raise enough cash to put up $200,000 to pay for some of the puts, how will it affect the strike price on the call?

3. If instead of three months, the restriction on his stock is six months, how will this change the hedge? Solve for the appropriate put and call strikes.

4. Using your answers from a) above, assume that after one month, the stock price goes up to $70 and Mr. Smith wants to unwind his hedge. Describe how you would go about terminating this hedge. Determine what it would cost to terminate this hedge.

5. Again, using your answers from a) above, if after one month the stock price went down to $28 instead and Mr. Smith wanted to terminate this hedge, what would be the economic repercussions? Calculate this amount.

6. As Mr. Smiths financial advisor, would you recommend this strategy to Mr. Smith? Why or why not?

7. List down the benefits and advantages of this strategy.