Meaning & use
lever up
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Meaning
verbtransitive or intransitivefinance
To increase the amount of borrowed money used to fund an investment or company, so that gains or losses become larger compared with your own capital.
Grammar: Can take an object (lever up the fund) or stand alone (they levered up before the crash).
Patterns
- lever up something
- lever up to buy something
The fund levered up to buy a larger stake in the airline.
Investors who levered up near the peak lost far more than their own savings.
The new owners plan to lever up the company and pay a big dividend.
Word forms
| third person singular | levers up |
|---|---|
| past tense | levered up |
| past participle | levered up |
| -ing form | levering up |
Common combinations
- lever up a portfolio
- Some managers lever up a portfolio when interest rates are low.
- lever up to buy
- The firm levered up to buy two rival chains.
- lever up aggressively
- Banks levered up aggressively in the years before the crisis.
- lever up the balance sheet
- The board refused to lever up the balance sheet any further.
Synonyms and how they differ
- leverage
- As a verb, leverage is broader and can mean using any asset to advantage, while lever up specifically means taking on more debt.
- gear up
- Gear up is the British term for raising debt levels, but also means getting ready in general.
- borrow more
- Borrow more is plain English and does not carry the idea of magnifying returns on an investment.
Opposites
Word family
- leverage noun
- the use of borrowed money to boost potential returns
- levered adjective
- funded with a large share of debt
- delever verb
- to reduce debt levels
- leveraged buyout noun
- a purchase financed mostly with borrowed money
Commonly confused: lever up or lever something up?
lever up vs lever something up
In physical use, to lever something up is to lift it with a bar, as in levering up a floorboard. The finance meaning has nothing to do with lifting.
Practice
A hedge fund that decides to lever up is most likely to do what?
Choose one answer.
To lever up is to take on more debt to invest. Selling holdings does the opposite, and the other options are unrelated to borrowing.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “lever up”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.