When a big financing opportunity breaks, leveraged finance bankers need answers fast. What's the existing capital structure? What does the documentation permit? Who are the sponsors? And how does the deal compare with precedent transactions?
This walkthrough shows how a leveraged finance banker can use 9fin AI to answer those questions and build a defensible financing view in minutes. We'll use GFL Environmental's rumoured take-private as an illustrative example.
This is the all-in-one workflow 9fin was built for. Grounded in 9fin’s proprietary, fully traceable data and original content, you can understand a complex, multi-tranche situation in minutes without switching platforms or rebuilding context. Here’s how:
AI Chat: Prompt 1 — What's happening?
AI Chat is built to help origination teams get conversant in a breaking situation — fast. Powered by 9fin's proprietary dataset, including OMs, filings, earnings calls, cap tables, and editorial analysis, it delivers fully cited answers in seconds.
AI Chat instantly surfaces the key facts: the news context, sponsor history, recent capital markets activity, and market reaction, in one cited answer. For GFL, that covers BC Partners' existing ownership, the June 2026 bond, and the share price jump, so you have the situation framed before opening a single filing.
The Thought Process panel (right) traces every response back to 9fin's analysis and data, so you can be confident in every figure before you send it up the chain.
Ask for a rundown on any fast-moving credit situation and receive a structured, cited response in seconds.
Prompt 2 — What's the capital structure?
AI Chat assembles the full debt stack instantly, with all figures fully cited to the official sources, so you can reduce hours of manually opening and reviewing multiple filings into seconds.
AI Chat will get you the full cap table in seconds, including pricing, yields, leverage, all cited to source.
Research Grid: Prompt 3 — How do peers compare?
Now that you know the situation and capital structure, you can assess how the company measures up against its peers.
First, you ask AI Chat to identify the peers:
Then in Research Grid, you compare GFL side-by-side with its peers across key financial metrics such as LTM revenue, EBITDA, EBITDA margin, net leverage, and interest coverage. Go beyond the initial tear sheet using 9fin's curated question library or your own custom queries; every cell is cited and traceable.
One prompt builds the comp table that anchors the internal memo and later the pitch deck — pitches in minutes, not days.
Research Grid compares multiple companies across sectors in depth.
You then ask AI Chat to compare recent financings.
Prompt 4: What's the change of control language?
Next, you need to understand the covenants to see what options the company has to manage its existing debt stack.
You start with 9fin's Bond Legal QuickTake — a plain-English read on the covenant package, benchmarked against recent deals drafted by 9fin’s expert legal team. In a few minutes you have the change of control picture and know where GFL sits versus market.
Using Covenant Explorer, you can then quickly access the verbatim clauses — the change of control, ratings decline condition, and the permitted holders definition. Benchmarking against recent HY deals, you instantly see what's market.
One covenant lookup answers what previously required an afternoon trawling through hundreds of pages in legal documents.
Covenant Explorer centralises all indentures and preliminary offering memorandums.
Covenant Explorer thoroughly breaks down indentures, notes and other deal information.
Prompt 5: What matures inside the window?
Now you ask: how much of the existing stack matures inside the LBO timeline?
AI Chat returns the full maturity wall in seconds: the tranches’ total value and due dates alongside the secured and unsecured notes.
AI Chat delivers extensive maturity walls.
Prompt 6 — What did management say?
Before proposing anything, you can quickly check the earnings call transcript summary to check management's stated posture.
In seconds, the summary reveals management's stated net leverage target, M&A strategy progress, asset integration, and capital allocation commentary. Each reference is timestamped so you can verify against what management actually said.
Earnings call transcript summary with timestamped references, so you can verify the record before you build a pitch on it.
This workflow is your edge
Before this workflow, a complete picture required hours of fragmented work. Each step involved a different tool, data source, and format.
But with 9fin AI, you go from breaking news to a defensible view of the financing in minutes. AI handles data retrieval and synthesis, while you handle the judgement — and are the team that secures the mandate.
Ready to try it yourself?
See how origination teams use 9fin to win mandates on the next mega-LBO.
Outputs shown are representative of the platform's capabilities and may not reflect live data.
