The Indianapolis Colts turn to the freeagent market to try to find a starting quarterback.
They find a promising free agent and sign him to a fiveyear contract. The contract has
the following provisions:
The player receives a signing bonus of $ million immediately.
He receives a salary payment of $ million at the end of each of the next five years.
Thats the period during which hes obliged to play for the team.
He receives deferred payments of $ million per year for another seven years,
beginning at the end of the sixth year after he signs the contract.
During a press conference at which the signing is announced, the players agent describes
the agreement as a one hundred fifty million dollar contract.
A In what sense is the agents description correct? Explain.
B In what sense is the agents description incorrect? Explain.
Hint: It may be helpful to answer the next question or at least,
to think about how youd approach answering it before you try to answer
this question.
Assume, here and below, that the market interest rate is percent. How much
would it cost the Pacers, in money paid up front, to arrange for a bank to make
the various payments, including the signing bonus, required by the contract?
Hints: Whats the market price of a bond that returns these payments?
Whats the present value of a payment received immediately?
What sort of credit instrument does the sequence of salary
payments look like? How is the sequence of deferred payments different?
The market value of an Nyear annuity thats missing the first K annual
payments is equal to the market value of a normal Nyear annuity that
provides the same annual payments, minus the market value of a normal
Kyear annuity that also provides the same annual payments.
How much would each of the five annual salary payments have to be
increased, leaving the other payments unchanged, so that the present value of
the contract would really be $ million?
Hint: This is a twostep problem. First, figure out what the
present value of the salary payments would need to be in order for the
present value of the entire contract to be $ million. Next, use the annuity
pricing formula, and some algebra, to identify the annual salary payment
that would make the present value of the salary payments equal to the
required value.