The introduction, and evolution of securitisation over the years, has made a phenomenal contribution to the area of corporate finance. Securitisation is specialised area which has evolved to deliver considerable advantages to banks and their corporate and government clients, a sub-subjected explored in this thesis. Securitisation is using the cashflow, creditworthiness and collateral of receivables to raise finance from the capital markets. To date, research on the subject of securitisation has produced a few textbooks and numerous articles written by academics and practitioners. The ambit of these writings addresses three questions, namely, what is securitisation; how does it work in practice; and how can securitisation be developed so that it can continue delivering advantages in the evolving world of corporate finance. Securitisation is very much a practical subject, and given that the author had very little, if any, practical exposure to the subject prior to developing this thesis, the author, admittedly, felt challenged to ascertain significant issues that could be developed to the extent that such development represents an original contribution to knowledge. Case law in the US had already explored the most significant issue regarding securitisation, namely, true sale. Armed with a solid theoretical base of knowledge that author looked for inspiration, and discovered it during the initial days when the Enron scandal hit the headlines. In short, the Enron scandal involved using the concept of securitisation to facilitate financial crime. The masterminds (if its appropriate to use such description) of the scandal, as this thesis will unfold later, cleverly used thousands of securitisation and hedging transactions to raise funds in order to give financial creditability to a giant corporation which on the surface appeared prosperous but, in reality, was breathing to a large extent on borrowed funds. This scandal, in which securitisation was used, inspired the author to develop the originality of the thesis by focusing on the issue of securitisation and financial crime. Given that financial crime is a huge area to explore, the author narrowed the focus to look at money laundering, and address the question: can the practice of securitisation facilitate money laundering? To approach this question and answer it at doctorate level required a solid understanding of what securitisation is and how it works in practice. Using textbooks, articles and conversations with practitioners, the thesis documents under Part 1, what securitisation is and how it works in practice before moving on to Part 2 to look at if and how securitisation can facilitate money laundering.

Because the nature of municipalities differs from that of commercial institutions, norms and standards for the determination of creditworthiness are also different. Although various documented models and studies addressing credit rating related issues in the commercial sector are available, no objective model for determining the creditworthiness of municipalities has been published in South Africa. This model has been developed specifically for the determination of the creditworthiness of municipalities and is based on objective standards. All the indicators applied in the model are calculated objectively. The net product of the model is therefore a numerical figure indicating creditworthiness at a specific time. The model shows the numerical composition of the figure, and specific indicators or norms of interest can be studied in greater detail. The model has the following unique features: • It calculates a numerical value, representing the creditworthiness of a municipality. • The determination of the creditworthiness figure is objective. • Trends are calculated and form part of the calculation of the creditworthiness figure. • The model is parameter-driven - by merely changing the values in the parameter file, all the calculations are changed accordingly. • The creditworthiness figure from the model does not claim to be an absolutely accurate representation of the creditworthiness of a municipality, but claims to be accurate enough (80/20 principle) to form a basis for reliable and effective management decisions. This model is the first in South Africa. to offer a means of determining the creditworthiness of municipalities objectively. It is a simple model which is based on the elements representing creditworthiness. / Accounting / D. Comm. (Accounting)

Este trabalho procura aprofundar o estudo de anomalias ao CAPM no mercado acionário brasileiro e explorar as relações destas anomalias com a característica dificuldade financeira, a qual é representada pela classificação de risco das empresas, usando estratégias de compra e venda a descoberto baseadas nas anomalias. As anomalias estudadas serão o efeito de momento, momento nos lucros, a volatilidade idiossincrática, o crescimento dos ativos, o investimento em capital e o efeito contrário. Nosso objetivo é examinar o impacto da característica dificuldade financeira sobre o retorno esperado das ações de empresas do grupo de menor classificação de risco. Para cumprir nosso objetivo, inicialmente usamos todas as ações da Bolsa de Valores de São Paulo (Bovespa) para comparar estas com a amostra de empresas que possuem classificação de crédito de longo prazo. O período estudado é de Janeiro de 2000 a Dezembro de 2012. Os métodos usados foram baseados em ordenação de carteiras e regressões univariadas e multivariadas de corte transversal. Encontramos algumas evidências de que empresas com classificação de crédito sugerem retornos anormais diferentes daqueles da amostra de todas as empresas. Este resultado foi significante, negativo e persistente em todas as especificações. Evidenciamos também que para empresas do menor tercil de classificação de crédito, o efeito contrário está presente e com retornos anormais positivos e significantes de 2,02% a.m. Isto nos dá alguma evidência de que a deterioração de crédito poderia ter um impacto no retorno ajustado exigido pelos investidores. / In this paper, we extend the CAPM anomalies study field in the Brazilian stock market and we explore the relationship between these anomalies and financial distress, represented by a credit rating classification, using anomaly-based trading strategies. The anomalies selected for this study are: momentum effect, earnings momentum, idiosyncratic volatility, asset growth, capital investment and the reversal effect. Our main goal is to investigate the impact of financial distress on the expected return of companies in lowest credit rating group. To fulfill this goal, first we use all the stocks in the São Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa), to compare these with the subset of companies which have a long-term credit rating. We studied the period from January 2000 through December 2012. The procedures carried in this study are based on portfolio sorts and cross-sectional univariate and multivariate regressions. We find evidence that the subsample of companies with a credit rating have abnormal returns different from that of the whole sample. These results are statistically significant, negative and persistent across all specifications. We also find some evidence that for companies in the lowest tercile of credit rating, the reversal effect is present and with positive and statistically significant abnormal returns in the magnitude of 2.02% per month. This gives some evidence that credit deterioration could have an impact on the risk-adjusted return required by investors.

The dissertation compares the export credit rating model of the national Export Guarantee and Insurance Agency EGAP with models applied by selected Czech banks. The first part of the dissertation presents a summary of credit risk theory. It depicts the main principles of lending and its risks. The dissertation further describes the factors that influence credit risk and the methods of its modelling. While mathematical risk models project the expected loss as well as its sensitivity to the risk factors, the focus of this thesis lies in qualitative models which set a normalized scale for probability of default, the so called credit rating models. The main contribution of the dissertation lies in the survey carried out among four Czech banks belonging to owners from various countries, from which we get an overview of their rating models. It follows from the gathered information that their models are based on financial indicators when rating the buyers/exporters. The models are also considerably amended by non-financial factors whose importance in certain cases rose following the recent financial crisis. The agency EGAP insures business activities abroad and therefore its model takes into account also specific factors related to the destination country. The main difference between the models of EGAP and the examined banks lies in the method of creation and validation: EGAP does not dispose of sufficient amount of business case studies, so that it has to rely on external consulting services when setting up and validating the model. The dissertation concludes that while all rating models are composed of similar risk factors highlighting past financial indicators of the financed business, each analysed rating model differs significantly in the specific database of business cases that were used to construct the model, depending on the availability of data to the bank/insurer. The conclusion that can be drawn from this fact is that the main factor for successful prevention of future failures of the credit rating models will be the extent of the credit assessment database which will be used for the construction of the respective rating model.

In many applications, the success probability 𝜋 of a Bernoulli distributed variable 𝑌 is influenced by another variable 𝑋. For example for loans granted, it is necessary to rate debtors in different rating classes, where the probability of default (PD) 𝜋 of 𝑌 is assumed to be homogeneous within and heterogeneous between the rating classes. The PD of a debtor is largely influenced by macroeconomic and individual variables (𝑋). In this work, we study a Bernoulli mixture model for 𝑌, where the success probability of 𝑌 changes systematically at the breakpoints. We focus on cross-sectional data and our main objective is to estimate all 𝑘 breakpoints with 𝑘 either known or unknown and their corresponding success probabilities between each pair of neighbouring breakpoints. To the best of our knowledge, an estimator for estimating multiple breakpoints has not yet been developed in this context. Thus, we develop an approach with a view to closing this research gap. We show that our estimator works for independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) 𝑋 as well as for a linear one-factor model for 𝑋. A theoretical foundation for this estimator is also presented. In practice, the number of breakpoints 𝑘 is often unknown a priori. As the multiple estimator is based on an iterative procedure, we propose stopping criteria for estimating 𝑘 correctly. We conduct a simulation study in the context of credit rating to demonstrate the performance of the developed estimator. Furthermore, we apply the new estimator on credit risk data from the Sächsische Aufbaubank, the Development Bank of Saxony. To simplify the use of the new estimator, we also develop an R package called MultipleBreakpoints.

Bakgrund: Kreditvärderingsinstituten har genom åren fått en del kritik. Under finanskrisen kring 2008 var en bidragande orsak till att kraschen blev så allvarlig på grund av felaktiga kreditvärderingar. Detta var dock endast möjligt på grund av att banker i stor utsträckning ignorerade riskerna med de felaktiga kreditbetygen, som de med hög sannolikhet var medvetna om. Med bakgrund som denna anser författarna att det är av intresse och nytta att granska huruvida kreditbedömningar på banker påverkar aktiekursen och på så sätt bolagsvärdet. Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka om kreditbetygsförändringar på de svenska storbankerna; Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB och Swedbank påverkar respektive banks aktiekurs. Ett delsyfte är att studera eventuell omfattning av denna påverkan på aktiekursen. Ett vidare delsyfte är att undersöka om det finns en skillnad i hur kreditbetygsförändringar påverkar aktiepriset hos de svenska storbankerna i hög- respektive lågkonjunktur. Metod: Denna kvantitativa studie grundas i en deduktiv ansats och hypoteser har utformats med hjälp av författarnas utvalda teorier: Effektiva marknadshypotesen (EMH), Agentteori och Signalteori. Studien har sedan genomförts i form av en eventstudie och det har uppmätts om det finns signifikanta avvikelser i aktiekursen vid publicerandet av en kreditbetygsförändring. Resultat: Resultatet i studien visar på att det finns signifikant påverkan på aktiekursen vid kreditbetygsnedgraderingar på eventdagen. Det påvisades även att lågkonjunktur var en bidragande faktor till aktieutvecklingen. Slutsats: Denna studie finner att kreditbetygsförändringar utgör en effekt på aktiekursen hos de svenska storbankerna. Det kan dock inte fastställas om det finns någon skillnad mellan upp- och nedgraderingar i denna studie. Resultatet visar istället på att lågkonjunktur är den bakomliggande orsaken till att aktiekursen påverkas signifikant. Resultatet tyder även på att aktiekursen har anpassat sig snabbare än i tidigare studier, vilket kan vara en följd av en mer digitaliserad marknad. / Background: Credit rating agencies have received a lot of criticism over the years. During the financial crisis, a contributing cause to why the crash became so serious was due to incorrect credit ratings. This was although only possible because banks generally ignored the risk in the incorrect credit ratings, which they with high probability knew of. With a background like this, the authors believe that it is of interest and benefit to examine whether credit assessments on banks affect the stock price and thus the company value. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate whether credit rating changes on the major swedish banks; Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB and Swedbank affect each bank's stock price. One part of the purpose is to study the extent of this impact on the stock price. A further part of the purpose is to study if there is a difference in the effect credit rating changes have on the major swedish banks stock price in a economic expansion respective recession. Methodology: This quantitative study is based on a deductive approach and hypotheses have been designed using the authors' selected theories: The Effective Market Hypothesis (EMH), Agent Theory and Signal Theory. The study is then implemented in the form of an event study and it has been tested if there are any significant deviations in the stock price connected to the credit rating changes. Results: The result of the study indicates that there is significant effect on the stock price during the event day when a credit rating downgrade is announced. The results also show that recession is a contributing factor to the significant effect on the stock price. Conclusions: This study finds that changes of credit ratings constitute an effect on the stock price among the big Swedish banks. It can however not be established if there is a difference between up- and downgrades. The result indicates instead that recession is the contributing factor to the significant effect on the stock price. The results also indicate that the stock price has adjusted faster than in earlier studies, which can be an effect of a more digitized market.

Having the author been involved in banking and finance for almost 25 years, this thesis intends to reflect on the role of banks with emphasis on cross border lending and credit rating, their effectiveness and the impacts of cultural differences. Perhaps this would not differ substantially from a researcher or a scholar, yet the exploratory approach taken in this research will be somewhat different as it deliberately seeks to answer a number of questions relevant to practitioners in today’s banking. In trying to achieve this goal, this thesis hopefully may find its way to international bankers wondering about the perspectives of their business in general and their profession in specific. It even may perhaps improve the understanding of their clients. The Basel committee which published the new Basel II framework on bank regulation and supervision was the result of long and careful discussions, wide consultations and comprehensive impact studies. Whereas Basel II covers the entire risk profile and supervision of financial institutions, this research is limited to the cross border lending by banks to companies and provides the views from both practicing international bankers and their customers on their 3 expectations regarding Basel II, credit rating and the relevance of context and culture differences. Bankers all over the world are being trained on how to read balance sheets, yet less attention is being paid as to by whom they are being created and how precisely these balance sheets came into existence, other than the accountancy standards applied. Bankers furthermore seem to agree on the fact that credit risks in large part are related to the management competencies, effective corporate governance and integrity of management and organization. The argument could be made that the assessment of management capabilities, governance and integrity may be hindered in those cases where the culture is little understood. In a three days conferences titled; “The Future of Relationship Banking”, 80 senior executives from international banks and large companies were gathered in Punta del Este, Uruguay and were asked to speak about these aspects. A transcript of the conference is provided as annex to this thesis (Annex 1) and serves to triangulate the findings of the research. Main findings of three management papers were presented by the researcher during the conference. A survey was performed during the conference and in addition, through an online survey, in total over 100 practitioners in the field participated in the survey. Results show a variation of conclusions, but very especially seem to confirm the view, contrary to the approach taken in Basel II, that cultural differences and context are felt to be highly relevant in cross border lending.

No description available.

In Sweden, the demand for official credit ratings has historically not been as substantial as in other parts of the world. This due to the fact that Swedish banks up until recently provided the market with shadow ratings. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) started investigating shadow ratings in August 2016 and decided that Nordic banks issuing shadow ratings were against the new directives because they were not registered as rating agencies. The Nordic corporate bond market has grown rapidly since the financial crisis and many bond issuers have avoided the organizational cost associated with obtaining and maintaining a credit rating. In 2016, more than half of Nordic bonds were issued without a credit rating, while today, the majority of Nordic bonds are issued with credit rating. Capital structure and specifically the goal of locating the optimal capital structure has, since the breakthrough of Modigliani and Miller in 1958, been the center of attention for a lot of research and the issue is of great interest for both academicians and practitioners. In practice, there are many factors that affect the decision of what leverage and capital structure a company decides to aim for. Among the factors are growth opportunities, firm size and profitability. With the base in corporate financial theory, the purpose of this study is to explore what factors that influence Swedish real estate companies regarding their decisions of capital structure and credit rating. With the method of semi-structured interviews and quantitative simulations, the study aims to understand why Swedish real estate companies are divided in their strategies about credit ratings and to explore if the firms have suboptimal credit ratings with respect to their capital structure. The quantitative part indicates that the optimal credit rating grade is A- with regard to the capital structure, for the examined Swedish real estate firms, under the current market conditions. The uncertainty of the optimal credit rating grade is displayed in a sensitivity analysis. The qualitative part of the study indicates that the rating of A- could plausibly be the optimal credit rating level and that it most likely is above the investment grade. The qualitative part further sheds light on the strategies of Swedish real estate firms and gives the market and investors insight to understand the underlying factors for why firms aim for different ratings. One can conclude that leverage and weighted average cost of capital are important factors when it comes to decisions regarding credit rating grades, but is often trumped by the quality label of credit ratings, the demand for different grades, the signals a upgrade/downgrade sends to the market and the possibility to reach the rating institutes requirements. / I Sverige har efterfrågan på officiella kreditbetyg historiskt sett inte varit lika stor som i andra delar av världen. Detta på grund av att svenska banker fram till nyligen försåg marknaden med skuggratings. Europeiska värdepappers- och marknadsmyndigheten (ESMA) började undersöka skuggratings i augusti 2016 och beslutade att nordiska banker som utfärdade skuggratings gick emot de nya direktiven eftersom de inte var registrerade som kreditvärderingsinstitut. Den nordiska obligationsmarknaden har vuxit snabbt sedan finanskrisen och många fastighetsbolag har undvikit kostnader kopplade till att erhålla och underhålla ett kreditbetyg. Under 2016 emitterades mer än hälften av nordiska obligationer utan kreditbetyg, medan idag är de flesta nordiska obligationer emitterade med kreditbetyg. Kapitalstruktur och specifikt målet att hitta den optimala kapitalstrukturen har sedan Modigliani och Millers genombrott 1958 varit centrum för mycket forskning och frågan är av stort intresse för både akademiker och utövare. I praktiken finns det många faktorer som påverkar beslutet om vilken belåningsgrad och kapitalstruktur som ett företag bestämmer sig för. Bland de påverkande faktorerna är tillväxtmöjligheter, företagsstorlek och lönsamhet. Med utgångspunkt i företagsfinansiella teorier, är syftetmed denna studie att undersöka vilka faktorer som påverkar svenska fastighetsbolag beträffande deras beslut om kapitalstruktur och kreditbetyg. Med metod i form av semistrukturerade intervjuer och kvantitativa simuleringar syftar studien till att förstå varför svenska fastighetsbolag har olika strategier kring kreditbetyg, samt att undersöka om företagen har suboptimala kreditbetyg med hänsyn till deras kapitalstruktur. Den kvantitativa delen indikerar att det optimala kreditbetyget är A-, med hänsyn till kapitalstruktur för de undersökta svenska fastighetsföretagen, under nuvarande marknadsförhållanden. Osäkerheten kring det optimala kreditbetyget visas i en känslighetsanalys. Den kvalitativa delen av studien indikerar att A- troligtvis kan vara den optimala kreditbetygsnivån samt att den optimala nivån högst sannolikt ligger över investment grade. Den kvalitativa delen belyser även de svenska fastighetsbolagens strategier och förser marknaden och investerare med insyn om de bakomliggande faktorerna till varför företag strävar efter olika betyg. Slutsatsen är att belåningsgrad och kapitalkostnader är viktiga faktorer när det gäller beslut om kreditbetyg, men att det ofta prioriterars efter kvalitén associerad med kreditbetyget, efterfrågan på olika kreditbetyg, signalerna en uppgradering / nedgradering sänder till marknaden och om företaget kan nå kreditvärderingsinstitutets krav.

隨著赤道原則概念的推行，銀行的授信決策中，逐漸考量公司的環境、社會、公司治理等面向的表現，顯示企業社會責任表現已成為銀行風險評估的因素之一。因此，本研究以信用風險評等與銀行借款利率作為企業風險之代理變數，探討企業社會責任表現是否會影響信評機構與銀行對公司之預期風險。 在控制財務特性及公司治理變數下，本研究實證結果顯示：（1）企業社會責任負面表現（環保與安全、資訊公告、其他違法與違規及綜合指標面向）與信用風險評等呈正向關係；（2）企業社會責任負面表現（其他違法與違規面向）與銀行借款利率呈正向關係；（3）額外之測試顯示，長期借款利率較短期借款利率更能反映企業社會責任對利率的影響。綜合上述分析結果，信評機構及銀行皆會將企業社會責任負面表現視為風險因子，提升公司信用風險評等及借款利率，使得公司的融資門檻提高。 / With the promotion of the Equator Principles, environmental, social and governance performance of the business is becoming considerations for bank loan decisions. It shows that corporate social responsibility has been one of the factors for risk considerations. Therefore, our study uses credit rating as well as loan rates as proxies for business risk to investigate whether the CSR performance affects the risk anticipation of banks and credit rating agencies. After controlling firm-specific and corporate governance factors, we find that: (1) A significantly positive association exits between CSR negative performance (environmental protection and safety, information announcement, other violations and the whole) and credit rating; (2) A significantly positive association also exits between CSR negative performance (other violations) and loan rates; (3) the analysis of additional tests indicates that CSR negative performance has greater effect on long-term loan rates than on short-term rates. To sum up, the CSR negative performance is one of the risk factors for banks and credit rating agencies to increase the credit rating and loan rates, simultaneously raising the financing threshold for the business.