A bond is a loan cut into transferable pieces. The document that governs it is called an indenture in the United States and, in an Indian privately placed debenture, a debenture trust deed accompanied by an information memorandum or key information document. Whatever it is called, the same handful of questions have to be answered before any number can be computed, and they are answered in the document rather than on a screen.
What does a bond indenture say?
Who owes the money, and at what rank? An issuer is a specific legal entity, not a group. A bond issued by a holding company and a bond issued by its operating subsidiary are different credits, and the operating company's lenders are structurally senior because they stand nearer the assets. Seniority within an entity is set by the document and by security: senior secured, senior unsecured, subordinated, and in banks a further ladder of instruments that absorb loss before depositors do.
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How much, in what currency, and against what face value? The denomination matters more than it sounds. A US corporate bond is normally quoted per 100 of face and traded in 1,000 denominations. A privately placed Indian non-convertible debenture typically carries a face value of ₹10,00,000 per unit, which is why an Indian institutional trade is described in units and crores rather than in bonds.
When is it repaid, and on what schedule? A bullet repays the whole principal at maturity. An amortising bond repays principal through the life. A sinking fund obliges the issuer to retire a stated amount each year, either by buying bonds in the market or by calling them at par by lot. That shortens the average life of the issue without changing its final maturity date.
What can interrupt the schedule? Call provisions, put provisions, conversion rights and make-whole clauses are all contingency provisions, and all of them are read off the document as dates, prices and formulas. The value of the optionality is a separate question, and a hard one, which is why it lives in FI1.04 rather than here.
Where do covenants fit in a bond indenture?
Covenants sit alongside all of this and belong to the credit analyst. They get their full treatment in the credit-analysis elective: what an incurrence test is, how a maintenance covenant differs from it, what a negative pledge protects, and why a covenant package predicts recovery better than a rating does.
What matters here is narrower. A covenant breach can accelerate the whole schedule, which turns a ten-year bond into a demand obligation, so the acceleration clause is a cash-flow fact even though its analysis is not.
Every one of those answers sits in the document. None of them is on a screen.