Esse estudo avalia a adequação dos requerimentos absolutos de capital no Brasil para bancos pequenos e grandes separadamente e investiga os requerimentos de capital mínimo para risco de crédito nas diferentes abordagens de Basiléia, em especial o impacto da adoção dos modelos dos ratings internos (IRB) conforme o Edital BCB n. 37/11. Além disso, propõe e avalia a abordagem padronizada dos ratings centralizados, CRBA, para cálculo do Capital Mínimo Exigido (CME) em bancos pequenos e que é baseada na abordagem padronizada em vigor na Europa, mas voltada para dados disponíveis nas Centrais de Risco. A CRBA pertence à família dos modelos internos e busca contribuir com as recentes discussões sobre a reforma regulatória bancária na Europa e nos Estados Unidos. Para os três objetivos mencionados, as metodologias adotadas foram: 1) o Valuet-at-Risk (VaR) não paramétrico de Crédito (CVaR) de Carey (2002) e o paramétrico Creditrisk+ para estimar o capital econômico do Sistema Bancário; seguido da 2) estimação amostral e avaliação do capital regulatório para bancos pequenos e grandes nas abordagens IRB, Basileia 1, abordagem padrão simplificada (SSA); além da 3) avaliação da abordagem proposta nesse estudo, a CRBA. A performance de todas essas abordagens é avaliada frente a cenários de stress ad hoc e durante a Crise de 2008-2009. Os dados utilizados foram exposições de crédito aleatórias colhidas da Nova Central de Risco do Banco Central do Brasil (SCR). Os principais resultados desse estudo são: 1) sugerir um capital regulatório total (Patrimônio de Referência mais provisão) para bancos grandes de 17,5% baseado no CVaR paramétrico de 99,9% e, para pequenos, de 15,31% baseado no CVaR de 99%; 2) sugerir que, de todas as abordagens de Basileia II, o IRB estimado conforme o Edital BCB n. 37/2011 e para as Probabilidade de Default (PDs) calculadas por matrizes de migração do SCR, é o mais conservador; 3) sugerir que a abordagem proposta seja mais sensível ao risco de crédito do que atual brasileira, especialmente no varejo, além de oferecer um nível proteção maior contra choques aleatórios de crédito. Na Crise de 2008-2009, os bancos pequenos e grandes apresentaram respostas muito distintas a choques diversos ou quando os \"estados da economia\" se deterioravam. Os bancos pequenos não atingem o grau de diversificação necessário para minimizar perdas extremas. Por outro lado, do ponto de vista do risco sistêmico, a falência dessas entidades tem impactos muito menores que a de conglomerados bancários de porte. Finalmente, a abordagem proposta CRBA é apresentada como uma alternativa à abordagem atual no Brasil e à abordagem padronizada (SA) nos demais países, em especial na Europa. No Brasil, a CRBA cumpriria o papel de aumentar a sensibilidade a risco de crédito do CME nos bancos pequenos criando incentivos para uma gestão de risco de crédito mais cautelosa e alinhando o nível de capital dos bancos pequenos ao seu risco efetivo. Nos demais países, a CRBA é uma alternativa à abordagem padronizada, que independe da opinião das Agências de Classificação de Risco (ACRs). A CRBA traz dois benefícios: o primeiro de ampliar o escopo dos modelos internos e eliminar a dependência regulatória na opinião das ACRs, diminuindo a oportunidade de arbitragem regulatória com ratings inflacionados e corrigindo incentivos para que as ACRs sejam apenas provedoras de opiniões isentas; e o segundo, de prover os organismos supervisores com um mecanismo de controle (tracking error) sobre a qualidade de gestão de risco dos bancos pequenos por meio das Centrais de Risco. / This work analyses capital requirements adequacy in Brazil both for small and big banks individually and evaluates the minimum capital requirements for credit risk in the different Basel II approaches, especially, the impacts of IRB adoption as stated on Edital BCB n.37/11. Besides, it proposes and evaluates the Centralized Standard Ratings Based Approach (CRBA) to calculate Minimum Capital Requirements (MCR) in small banks. It is inspired in the Basel II Standard Approach (SA) disseminated in Europe, but based on information from the Credit Registers. The CRBA is an internal model approach in line with recent discussions on regulatory reform in Europe and in the US. The methodology to address these three research goals is: the non-parametric credit Value-at-Risk (VaR) or CVaR of Carey(2002) and the parametric Creditrisk+ to estimate the economic capital for the banking system; to evaluate regulatory capital in small and big banks in the IRB, Basel 1 and the Simplified Standard Approach (SSA) on the sample; and to evaluate the CRBA, proposed in this study. The performance of these approaches is confronted with ad hoc stress scenarios and within the Credit Crisis of 2008-2009. The data is comprised of credit exposures available in the Brazilian Credit Register (SCR). This work main results are: 1) to suggest a total regulatory capital (capital and provision) of 17.5% to big banks based on a parametric CVaR (99.9%) and of 15.31% to small banks based on a CVaR (99%); 2) to suggest, based on all Basel II approaches, that the IRB, as stated on Edital BCB n.31/11 and calibrated with the probabilities of default (PD) estimated with transition matrixes from the SCR, is the most conservative approach; 3) to suggest that the proposed approach is more sensitive to credit risk especially in retail and is more effective against stress chocks. Small and big banks behave differently to adverse shocks. The small banks, for instance, have problems diversifying out extreme losses when the \"states of the economy\" deteriorate. On the other hand, considering systemic risk, the bankruptcies of these institutions are much less of a problem than the ones of a big bank. Finally, the CRBA is presented as an alternative to the current approach (SSA) in Brazil and to the Standard Approach (SA) in other countries, specifically in Europe. In Brazil, the CRBA would increase the risk sensitivity of MCR on smaller banks creating incentives to more careful risk management practices and aligning their capital and risk levels. On the other countries, the CRBA is an alternative to the Standard Approach (SA) that is not dependent on Credit Rating Agencies - CRAs\' opinions and brings two additional benefits. First, it is an internal model based approach eliminating regulatory dependence on CRAs\' opinions, minimizing opportunities to regulatory arbitrage with inflated ratings and allowing CRAs to be more of a trustworthy opinion provider. Second, it provides supervisors a tracking error mechanism to evaluate risk management in small banks using Credit Registers.

This thesis investigates three topics in empirical corporate finance. In the first essay, the focus is on the role of financial constraints in the market for corporate control. In the second and third essays, we explore the effect of personal connections at board and executive levels on corporate credit rating and initial public offering (IPO) underpricing respectively. In the first essay, using a large sample of US acquisitions made between 1985 and 2013, we study the effect of financial constraints on acquisition gains and acquisition likelihood. Our findings show that financial constraints of target companies significantly increase acquisition premiums and abnormal returns for both parties. Our results further show that the presence of financial constraints in the target is one of the most important determinants of a takeover bid. This supports the idea that acquisitions may improve the ability of financially constrained companies to access capital through a better reallocation of resources within segments of the same company (e.g., internal capital market) or through better access to external markets. This would eventually benefit bidders too, as new capital would be invested in valuable growth opportunities that otherwise would expire unexercised. In the second essay, using a large sample of US public debt issues we show that personal connections between directors of issuing companies and rating agencies result in higher credit ratings. We estimate the average effect to be about one notch. The results are robust to several alternative tests including additional controls for managerial traits, placebo tests and propensity score matching. Moreover, our tests on default rates and bond yields do not appear to reflect a favourable treatment by the rating agency. Rather, they suggest that personal connections act as a mechanism to reduce asymmetric information between the rating agency and the issuer. In the final essay, using a large sample of IPOs in the U.S. we show that interpersonal connections between directors and top executives in issuers and underwriting banks result in significantly lower levels of IPO underpricing. We also examine the issuers' long-term stock returns following their IPOs. Our results indicate that the connected companies' long-term returns are not significantly different from the non-connected companies. This suggests that underwriters set lower levels of underpricing for the connected companies not to treat them favourably, but due to better flow of and stronger reliance on soft information and lower risk exposure.

In this thesis, we study if credit rating agencies (CRAs) are capable, through their rating process, of discover information that it is valued by the market. Additionally, we investigate if CRAs are able to propagate their findings to the market. if Specifically, we study the differences between issuer-paid and investor-paid credit rating agencies, and how those differences shape the characteristics of their credit ratings and ultimately, if investors can profit from credit rating announcements. For our research we use a large dataset of rating announcements from 1997 to 2012, which includes information of four credit rating agencies (CRAs), Egan-Jones Ratings Company (EJR), Fitch, Moody's and Standard and Poor's, which representing investor-paid and issuer-paid CRAs. This allows us to compare these two kind of agencies and its ratings. In the first essay we study what variables explain the rating coverage of an investor-paid credit rating agency. We show that probability of being covered by EJR is positively related with the size of the firm, the level of institutional ownership of the firm, stock analysts and issuer-paid CRAs level of coverage, while it is negatively related to the firm's corporate governance. We found that the likelihood of being covered by EJR augments after regulatory changes and most interestingly, since EJR received the NRSRO certification. In the second essay we compare the timeliness of rating changes produced by EJR and the issuer-paid CRAs representatives. We found that the lead effect of investor-paid over issuer-paid CRAs has weakened in recent years, while Granger causality is bidirectional and therefore a lead-lag relationship cannot be established. Finally, stock prices manifest statistically significant abnormal reactions to downgrades of all agencies; however, abnormal negative returns are significantly higher for EJR. Our results support the hypothesis that issuer-paid agencies improve the quality and timeliness of their ratings when they see their market power threatened by tighter regulations. Nevertheless, event studies illustrate that markets still price stocks under the assumption that investor-paid rating actions carry superior information. Finally, our third essay found that purchasing (selling short) stocks with positive (negative) rating announcements generates portfolios with positive annual abnormal returns when investors react immediately to rating announcements. Returns are higher for stronger announcements (i.e. rating changes over rating outlooks) and for an investor-paid agency rather than an issuer-paid agency. When we introduced transaction costs, only the investor-paid agencies' announcements lead to positive abnormal returns. Additionally, when we included a delay in the reaction of investors to rating announcements, all positive abnormal returns net of transaction costs disappeared. Finally, our results suggests that the differences between investor-paid and issuer-paid agencies are based on their dissimilar business models rather than their regulatory status.

<p>Credit rating systems are complex processes and involve mainly two parties; a company and a bank. The complexity of a relationship between a company and a bank lies in the fact that a company usually has access to more information about the company than the bank. Hence, an auditor acts as a third party who validates the information involved in credit rating processes. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how auditing is being used in credit rating processes and to identify the role auditing has. In addition, this study recognizes the use of auditing in both Denmark and Sweden, with a goal to compare and explore the differences between the countries.</p><p>In order to collect secondary data, Danish and Swedish banks were interviewed. To be able to explore the rather newly discovered relationship between auditing and credit rating processes, this study was carried out with an exploratory research design. In addition, this study is based on assumptions stated in the Agency Theory, the Positive Accounting Theory and the Stakeholder Model. Because the intention was to use existing theories, a deductive research approach was suitable.</p><p>The empirical findings imply that auditing is being used in banks’ credit rating processes to validate the information and to reduce the risk. The trustworthiness of auditors and the relationship between a company and a bank influence banks’ perceptions regarding the creditworthiness of companies. The role of auditing is rather common in Denmark and Sweden, whereas the amount of accessible information is higher in Sweden than in Denmark. The pattern is that more information diminishes the risk and implies that the role of auditing is less important.</p><p>This study is limited to only taking the bank’s perceptions of auditing into consideration, leaving out other stakeholders. Moreover, the examination is restricted to Danish and Swedish banks. The findings are interesting for banks and small companies to consider, because they explain the importance of auditing other components such as customer relationship. As a conclusion, the findings would be appropriate for Swedish banks to review in order to evaluate possible consequences of the statutory audit.</p>

Credit rating systems are complex processes and involve mainly two parties; a company and a bank. The complexity of a relationship between a company and a bank lies in the fact that a company usually has access to more information about the company than the bank. Hence, an auditor acts as a third party who validates the information involved in credit rating processes. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how auditing is being used in credit rating processes and to identify the role auditing has. In addition, this study recognizes the use of auditing in both Denmark and Sweden, with a goal to compare and explore the differences between the countries. In order to collect secondary data, Danish and Swedish banks were interviewed. To be able to explore the rather newly discovered relationship between auditing and credit rating processes, this study was carried out with an exploratory research design. In addition, this study is based on assumptions stated in the Agency Theory, the Positive Accounting Theory and the Stakeholder Model. Because the intention was to use existing theories, a deductive research approach was suitable. The empirical findings imply that auditing is being used in banks’ credit rating processes to validate the information and to reduce the risk. The trustworthiness of auditors and the relationship between a company and a bank influence banks’ perceptions regarding the creditworthiness of companies. The role of auditing is rather common in Denmark and Sweden, whereas the amount of accessible information is higher in Sweden than in Denmark. The pattern is that more information diminishes the risk and implies that the role of auditing is less important. This study is limited to only taking the bank’s perceptions of auditing into consideration, leaving out other stakeholders. Moreover, the examination is restricted to Danish and Swedish banks. The findings are interesting for banks and small companies to consider, because they explain the importance of auditing other components such as customer relationship. As a conclusion, the findings would be appropriate for Swedish banks to review in order to evaluate possible consequences of the statutory audit.

Today all private corporations are obligated by statutory audit. The government of Sweden appointed an investigation to conclude if the audit should be statutory or not. The investigator presented on the third of April 2008 a report (SOU 2008:32) that suggests abolishment of the statutory audit for approximately 97 % of all private corporations in Sweden. This will result in certain effects on the banks credit rating because of the fact that the banks trust the audited accounts to have been audited by an independent audit. The most important in the banks credit rating are: personal judgement, business concept, business plan and repayment ability. The banks also use the private corporations audited accounts in its credit rating. We conducted a case study by interviewing four bank officials in different banks in Skövde and Tibro. The purpose of the study was to investigate the banks credit rating and the audits importance in the credit rating. The conclusion deducted from our case study it that the confidence between the bank and the company is very high valued and that the audit is a sign of quality.

This paper utilizes a sample of firms over the years 2000–2009 to test the effects of credit rating changes, the financial crisis, interest rates, and other variables on short-term, long-term, and total debt levels on the balance sheet. Each independent variable was created using a one year lag in order to run the regressions. The values of these variables from the previous year are being analyzed to see if they can predict debt levels for the following year. The results of this paper suggest that levels of long-term and total debt are somewhat reliant on and are positively correlated with the federal funds rate. The results indicate that short-term debt levels are much harder to predict, but they appear to be negatively correlated with the financial crisis. Long-term debt levels were also affected by this variable, but were positively correlated with it. Z-score was a significant predictor of all types of debt, and was positively correlated with each. In an effort to acquire as many data points as possible for the regressions, strict data filtration techniques were used. This limited the sample to 177 firms. The overall insignificance of the results in this study suggest that further research on what drives debt levels on the balance sheet is necessary. This will generate a greater understanding of firm behavior both inside and outside of a financial crisis.

Bakgrund Bankers kreditgivning till företag föregås av en noggrann granskning och kontroll av företagets status. För att sänka riskerna till en acceptabel nivå används olika bedömningsverktyg. Kreditbedömingen skiljer sig dock mellan olika banker. Vissa tar in mer information och gör en grundligare riskanalys, medan andra går mer på magkänsla. Kassaflödesanalysen är ett verktyg som vissa kreditgivare använder sig av. Analysen är ett komplement till resultat- och balansräkningen. Länsförsäkringar Älvsborgs (LF) är en relativt ny aktör på kreditmarknaden. De vill utöka sin kreditverksamhet och effektivisera kreditbedömningsprocessen.   Syfte Syftet med rapporten är att undersöka hur kreditvärderingsarbetet hos LF kan förbättras och effektiviseras. Effektiviseringen avser primärt total handläggningstid för ett kreditärende och sekundärt personalens arbetstid för ett ärende. Undersökningen syftar också till att se hur kassaflödesanalys kan inkluderas i kreditbedömningsprocessen.   Metod Undersökningen är en kvalitativ studie, som med hjälp av intervjuer och litteraturinsamling av olika dokument skapar en empirisk bas. Kvalitativa undersökningar försöker förklara sambandet mellan teori och bakomliggande sociala faktorer för en frågeställning.   Slutsatser Kreditrisken vid utlåning minskar om kassaflödesanalys införs som standardiserad arbetsmetod vid handläggning av kreditärenden hos LF. De kan också effektivisera den totala handläggningstiden, när beslutsfattandet delegeras ut i organisationen. Färre kreditärenden behöver handläggas av högre instanser inom LF, vilket leder till minskad total arbetsinsats och högre effektivitet. Handläggarnas arbetstid för respektive kreditärende ökar. Viss tidseffektivisering uppnås dock när beslutsunderlaget blir tydligt och handläggaren inte behöver sitta och fundera på sitt beslut, eller lägga tid på att redogöra för beslutsunderlaget hos högre instans. Kassaflödesanalysen bör vara integrerad i det befintliga KB (kreditberedning) systemet för att handläggningen skall fungera effektivt. LF bör också genomföra en ordentlig utbildningsinsats i samband med systemändringen.

Credit risk is one of the major risks banks and financial institutions are faced with. With the New Basel Capital Accord, banks and financial institutions have the opportunity to improve their risk management process by using Internal Rating Based (IRB) approach. In this thesis, we focused on the internal credit rating process. First, a short overview of credit scoring techniques and validation techniques was given. By using real data set obtained from a Turkish bank about manufacturing firms, default prediction logistic regression, probit regression, discriminant analysis and classification and regression trees models were built. To improve the performances of the models the optimum sample for logistic regression was selected from the data set and taken as the model construction sample. In addition, also an information on how to convert continuous variables to ordered scaled variables to avoid difference in scale problem was given. After the models were built the performances of models for whole data set including both in sample and out of sample were evaluated with validation techniques suggested by Basel Committee. In most cases classification and regression trees model dominates the other techniques. After credit scoring models were constructed and evaluated, cut-off values used to map probability of default obtained from logistic regression to rating classes were determined with dual objective optimization. The cut-off values that gave the maximum area under ROC curve and minimum mean square error of regression tree was taken as the optimum threshold after 1000 simulation. Keywords: Credit Rating, Classification and Regression Trees, ROC curve, Pietra Index

Abstract According to a survey conducted by Rock (1984), the major factors of influenced credit risk are (1) the relationship with other creditor, (2) income, (3) loan-income ration, (4) profession, (5) immovable property, (6) check & deposit account. And, the sure way to score with lenders are (1) rules of thumb & subjective judgment, (2) credit rating system, (3) credit scoring system, and (4) expert system. The purpose of the present study is to examine the relationships between sex, age, income, profession, assets, the purpose of loan, employment information, credit references, credit limit, total installment loan account by the consumer, total number of inquiries and the consumer¡¦s payment records. The results of this search indicate that: 1. The previous stereo type thinking of banking industry always treat the military officials as wall as police officials are risky groups to consumer credit loan. However, this study found the contrary result. The payment over due rate is comparatively lower than that of other customer groups. The conclusion is that military officials and police officials are potentially good customers to banking system in terms of profit margin against risk. 2. From the credit scoring system of banking industry. That the customers are between 35 to 50s should be better than those age between 20 to 30s. However, this study demonstrates the other direction that customers with age below 35years old always better than those who over 35years old to the banking creditability actual performance. 3. The banking industry assume the married people will be a better group compared with non-married group on the money collect of the loan they made. However this study proves that creditability performance in sequence is (i) age below 35 and singer is the best. (ii) those married is the second while.(iii)age over 35 and non- married group is the worst one. 4. Most of people think those who have consumer credit loan from bank and would not want their family to be aware of their personal loan may have higher chance of payment over due. However, the statistics study from bank branch A indicates that this kind of customers (don¡¦t want family member know about loan) are the best group on payment over due (only 5.5%). While those who agree to let family member aware are the second (7.5%), and others with no comment are the worst.