This thesis consists of three self-contained papers on defined benefit (DB) pension provision in the United Kingdom (UK). In particular, in the first paper, I examine the effect that labour market incentives, managerial incentives and the adoption of FRS17 by UK firms, have on DB plan retention decisions. In this paper, I also examine the role of insider trustees, defined as trustees that are also company executives, on the firm’s decision to keep DB plans open. I find that firms for which human capital is especially important are more likely to retain their defined benefit plans. In addition, CEO and CFO membership in the same pension plan that is provided for other employees positively influences the retention of defined benefit pension plans. Additional analysis using a sub-sample for which data on pension plan trustees are available suggests that being a CEO and a trustee increases the probability of DB plan retentions. Moreover, being a CEO/CFO trustee and a member of the DB plan offered to all employees increases the likelihood of DB plan retention. However, I do not find any evidence that voluntary adoption of FRS 17 influences DB plan retention. In addition, I find that insider-trustees have a positive influence on the decision to maintain DB plans, especially when they are members of these plans. In the second paper, I look at the effect of DB plan retentions and executive membership in them, on corporate credit ratings and the investment and dividend decisions. Empirical findings suggest that firms which continue to sponsor DB plans are more likely to have lower credit ratings which are exacerbated when these plans are underfunded. Despite the above effect however, I find that if the CEO is a member of the DB plan, it positively affects credit ratings. In addition, I find some evidence that the participation of CEOs in the main DB plans in conjunction with overfunded pension plans, negatively affect investment decisions when these schemes remain open. I do not find any association between CEOs membership in the main DB plan and dividend payments which may be explained by the market signalling effects of dividends. Finally, in the third paper, I provide a thorough analysis of the pension buy-in and buy-out market in the UK, and I empirically examine the determinants of such transactions from a firm and plan perspective. I find that firms that implement buy-ins have larger and more funded pension plans, are more profitable and have higher union densities. Moreover, firms that complete buy-outs have larger pension plans and allocate less pension assets in equity. Moreover, the number of employees is negatively associated with both transactions implying it is costlier for firms to conduct either a buy-in or buy-out transaction. While union density is positively associated with buy-ins, it has a negative effect on the likelihood of buy-outs suggesting that unions support buy-in but not buy-out transactions. This may be potentially explained by the fact that the latter are associated with with plan winding-ups.

Syftet med den här studien är att utreda hur redovisningsmarknaden skulle kunna påverkas av högre gränsvärden för frivillig revision samt vilka effekter det skulle medföra. För att undersöka detta har vi valt att utforma en kvalitativ intervjustudie där respondenterna har bestått av auktoriserade revisorer, auktoriserade redovisningskonsulter samt tjänstemän inom Upplysningscentralen, Bolagsverket samt Skatteverket.Studien har inspirerats av de gränsvärden som presenterades i det nya EU-direktivet som kom år 2013. Vi har diskuterat en eventuell höjning av gränsvärdena med respondenterna för att se hur detta skulle kunna påverka den svenska redovisningen.Studien har inspirerats av grounded theory som innebär att jämförelser sker löpande under undersökningens gång och studien har analyserats utifrån ett principal- och agent förhållande. I studien har vi kommit fram till att för kort tid har gått för att det ska synas några tydliga resultat men samtliga respondenter är över lag positiva mot högre gränsvärden och de tror att gränsvärdena kommer att höjas på sikt. / Program: Civilekonomprogrammet

As a result from the latest financial crisis, the banking industry has undergone major modifications during the last years in order to limit banks’ risks. A vast majority of existing literature tends to focus upon credit risk evaluation methods and techniques mainly concerning quantitative measures and large companies. Thus, the lack of research regarding credit risk evaluation of SMEs is profound, especially considering Sweden. With the dominant market share of SMEs compared to large corporations the authors found it interesting to further explore this area of the credit assessment process as SMEs largely impact the Swedish business sector.   The purpose of the thesis at hand is to explore and provide empirical evidence of which criteria banks assess when evaluating credit risk of SMEs in Sweden. In regards to the purpose the authors have chosen to adapt the perspective of the banking industry throughout the thesis. In order to bridge the research gap the following question was established, “How do banks evaluate credit risk of SMEs in Sweden?” In light of the lack of research regarding qualitative assessment of credit risk, the authors found it interesting in terms of developing new theoretical and practical knowledge to establish the following sub-question, “What are the qualitative criteria used by banks when evaluating credit risk of SMEs in Sweden?” Further, as existing literature mainly focus on large companies the authors found it interesting to compare the findings regarding credit risk evaluation on SMEs to the evaluation process of one of the largest credit rating agencies. As a result the second sub-question was established as following, “Are these criteria similar to the criteria used by Standard & Poor’s in their rating model?” These questions were conducted in order to provide the authors and the reader with further insight regarding the criteria used by banks in their evaluation process.   An inductive approach was adopted, in line with the epistemological stance of interpretivism and the ontological belief of constructivism. With this in mind, the authors of the thesis conducted a qualitative exploratory research employing narrative interviews in order to collect the data needed, as of the lack of existing research to address the research questions.   The results of the research were that the criteria used in the assessment of credit risk tend to alter from advisor to advisor. The most commonly used criteria by the advisors are budget, business plan, customer’s customers, internal and external discipline, financial statements, industry specifics, historical accounts, key individuals, relationship, repayment capacity and the owner/individual. It was discovered that the qualitative criterion of assessing the individual majorly impacts the credit risk evaluation. However, what matters in the end is the overall impression of both qualitative and quantitative measures of the firm.   In regards to sub-question one, the authors established a list of qualitative criteria used by advisors in their credit risk evaluation of SMEs, the most widely used criteria among the advisors are the owner/individual, key individuals, internal discipline, industry specifics, external discipline, customer’s customers, relationship and business plan. In comparison with the criteria used by Standard and Poor’s and the banks, it was evident that the criteria used in the evaluation differed a lot between the two.

Darbo tema yra aktuali tuo, kad tarptautinės reitingų agentūros, įvertindamos skolų krizę Europoje, pastaruoju metu daugeliui šalių mažino valstybės kredito reitingus ar blogino jų perspektyvas. Nors po prieš trejus metus patirto nuosmukio Baltijos šalių reitingai ir stabilizavosi, jų aukštesnių reikšmių išlaikymas Baltijos valstybėms yra svarbus užsienio investicijų pritraukimo ir šių šalių finansų sektoriaus vystymosi veiksnys. Vis dėlto, reitingų gerėjimas gali turėti ir priešingą poveikį.Todėl svarbu išsiaiškinti situaciją Baltijos šalyse. Tiriamojo darbo objektas yra Baltijos šalių ilgalaikio ir trumpalaikio skolinimosi užsienio valiuta reitingai bei ilgalaikio ir trumpalaikio skolinimosi nacionaline valiuta reitingai. Šio darbo tikslas - atlikus teorinę valstybės kredito reitingų ir jų įtakos šalies finansų sektoriaus vystymuisi ir užsienio investicijų srautams analizę, nustatyti valstybės kredito reitingų įtaką finansų sektoriaus vystymuisi ir užsienio investicijų srautams Baltijos šalyse. Darbo tikslui pasiekti buvo suformuluoti uždaviniai: atlikti teorinę valstybės kredito reitingų ir jų įtakos šalies finansų sektoriaus vystymuisi ir užsienio investicijų srautams analizę, išanalizuoti Baltijos šalių finansų sektoriaus išsivystymo lygį bei užsienio investicijų srautų ir kredito reitingų šiose šalyse pokyčių tendencijas, reitingus įtakojusius veiksnius, nustatyti valstybės kredito reitingų įtaką finansų sektoriaus vystymuisi ir užsienio investicijų srautams Baltijos... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The topic of the work is relevant due to the fact, that international credit rating agencies, assessing the debt crisis in Europe, recently downgraded credit ratings or their outlook for many countries. Despite the fact that sovereign credit ratings of Baltic states have stabilized after the decline occured three years ago, higher ratings are the essential factor for Baltic states, seeking to attract foreign investment and promote their financial sector development. Though, the improvements of ratings may have the opposite effect. Therefore, it is important to clarify the situation in Baltic states. The object of the research work – the Baltic states‘ short and long term in foreign and local currency ratings. The purpose of this paper is to establish the impact of sovereign credit ratings on the financial sector development and international capital flows in the Baltic states, doing theoretical analysis on sovereign credit ratings and their impact on the financial sector development and international capital flows in a country. In order to achieve an objective, the following tasks have been fomulated: to accomplish above-mentioned theoretical analysis, to analyse the level of financial sector development, changes in trends of international capital flows and sovereign credit ratings in the Baltic states, reveal the main factors, which affected ratings in these countries and ascertain the influence of these ratings on the financial sector development and international capital... [to full text]

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)

In the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, the way credit risk is affected by and affects the macroeconomic environment has been the focus of academics, risk practitioners and central bankers alike. In this thesis I approach three distinct questions that aim to provide valuable insight into how corporate defaults, recoveries and credit ratings interact with the conditions in the wider economy. The first question focuses on how well the macroeconomic environment forecasts corporate bond defaults. I approach the question from a macroeconomic perspective and I make full use of the multitude of lengthy macroeconomic time series available. Following the recent literature on data-rich environment modelling, I summarise a large panel of 103 macroeconomic time series into a small set of 6 dynamic factors; the factors capture business cycle, yield curve, credit premia and equity market conditions. Prior studies on dynamic factors use identification schemes based on principal components or recursive short-run restrictions. The main contribution to the body of existing literature is that I provide a novel and more robust identification scheme for the 6 macro-financial stochastic factors, based on a set of over-identifying restrictions. This allows for a more straightforward interpretation of the extracted factors and a more meaningful decomposition of the corporate default dynamics. Furthermore, I use a novel Bayesian estimation scheme based on a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm that has not been used before in a credit risk context. I argue that the proposed algorithm provides an effcient and flexible alternative to the simulation based estimation approaches used in the existing literature. The sampling scheme is used to estimate a state-of-the-art dynamic econometric specification that is able to separate macro-economic fluctuations from unobserved default clustering. Finally, I provide evidence that the macroeconomic factors can lead to significant improvements in default probability forecasting performance. The forecasting performance gains become less pronounced the longer the default forecasting horizon. The second question explores the sensitivity of corporate bond defaults and recoveries on monetary policy and macro-financial shocks. To address the question, I follow a more structural approach to extract theory-based economic shocks and quantify the magnitude of the impact on the two main credit risk drivers. This is the first study that approaches the decomposition of the movements in credit risk metrics from a structural perspective. I introduce a VAR model with a novel semi-structural identification scheme to isolate the various shocks at the macro level. The dynamic econometric specification for defaults and recoveries is similar to the one used to address the first question. The specification is flexible enough to allow for the separation of the macroeconomic movements from the credit risk specific unobserved correlation and, therefore, isolate the different shock transmission mechanisms. I report that the corporate default likelihood is strongly affected by balance sheet and real economy shocks for the cyclical industry sectors, while the effects of monetary policy shocks typically take up to one year to materialise. In contrast, recovery rates tend to be more sensitive to asset price shocks, while real economy shocks mainly affect secured debt recovery values. The third question shifts the focus to credit ratings and addresses the Through-the- Cycle dynamics of the serial dependence in rating migrations. The existing literature treats the so-called rating momentum as constant through time. I show that the rating momentum is far from constant, it changes with the business cycle and its magnitude exhibits a non-linear dependence on time spent in a given rating grade. Furthermore, I provide robust evidence that the time-varying rating momentum substantially increases actual and Marked-to-Market losses in periods of stress. The impact on regulatory capital for financial institutions is less clear; nevertheless, capital requirements for high credit quality portfolios can be significantly underestimated during economic downturns.

Située à l’articulation de la sociologie de l’économie, de l’histoire de la finance et de la sociologie de la connaissance, cette thèse présente donc une analyse du rôle de la notation du crédit dans la régulation financière, et plus largement, du rôle de l’incertitude et de l’incomplétude juridiques sur les anticipations économiques des acteurs financiers. Le cadre d’analyse de la recherche se résume en quatre points : Premièrement, la thèse rompt avec une lecture strictement intellectualiste de l’action publique et présente une approche de la régulation financière par ses instruments, empruntant ainsi l’approche pragmatiste développée par les social studies of finance et par la nouvelle sociologie économique d’inspiration américaine. Deuxièmement, l’hypothèse centrale de la recherche est que les instruments réglementaires sont à la fois des techniques de connaissance et des outils juridiques. Aussi, ce sont les frictions qu’occasionnent les deux activités parfois contradictoires de calculer et de gouverner qui donnent au changement réglementaire sa dynamique historique. Troisièmement, prenant l’exemple de l’usage de la notation dans la supervision financière comme dispositif de calcul et technique de gouvernement, la thèse propose une histoire de longue durée (1865-2010) de l’activité réglementaire sur les marchés financiers aux Etats-Unis et en Europe au travers de cinq régimes de régulation (régime statutaire, d’appel, disciplinaire, fictionnel et contractuel). Quatrièmement, l’originalité de la recherche est de combiner une approche macroscopique du changement réglementaire avec une approche méticuleuse de plusieurs courtes séquences historiques durant lesquelles d’importantes innovations réglementaires ont vu le jour, notamment le New Deal aux Etats-Unis et la crise de la dette souveraine en Europe. Ainsi, en plus de définir les contours de cinq régimes réglementaires, la thèse analyse la façon dont les régulateurs se sont saisis de la notation financière comme « mécanisme d’embrayage » afin d’opérationnaliser la transition d’un régime à un autre. / Located at the intersection of economic sociology, financial history, and the sociology of knowledge, this dissertation examines the role of credit ratings in financial regulation, and more broadly, the role of financial uncertainties and legal incompleteness on financial actors’ anticipatory decisions. The framework set forth in this study can be summarized as follows. First, this study breaks with an intellectualist approach of public action to analyze financial regulation from the perspective of its instruments. As such, this research draws on a pragmatist agenda developed in social studies of finance and recent work in economic sociology. Second, the main hypothesis of this dissertation is to approach regulatory instruments as technologies of knowing and tools of government. From this double viewpoint, I hypothesize that the frictions generated by the two competing activities of calculating and governing impart the regulatory activity with both its structural features and historical dynamics. Third, using the example of regulatory reliance on ratings, I propose a longue durée historical analysis (1865-2010) of the regulatory activity in the U.S. and Europe through the examination of five regulatory regimes (statutory, appeal, disciplinary, fictional, and contractual). Four, one original feature of this dissertation is to combine a macroscopic analysis of regulatory change with a meticulous approach of several short historical sequences during which important regulatory innovations came into being, notably the New Deal in the U.S. and the European sovereign debt crisis. Thus, in addition to setting the contours of five regulatory frameworks, this dissertation analyses the ways in which regulators used ratings as “clutching” devices to operationalize the legal transition from one regime to another.

No description available.

In the multifaceted landscape of financial markets, the understanding and application of data science methods are crucial for achieving robustness, fairness, and strategic advancement. This dissertation addresses these critical areas through three interconnected studies. The first study investigates the problem of data imbalance, with particular emphasis on financial applications such as credit risk assessment, where the prevalence of non-defaulting entities overshadows defaulting ones. Traditional classification models often falter under such imbalances, leading to biased predictions. By analyzing linear discriminant functions under conditions where one class's sample size grows indefinitely while the other remains fixed, this study reveals that certain parameters stabilize, providing robust predictions. This robustness ensures model reliability even in skewed data environments. The second study explores anomalies in option pricing, specifically the total positivity of order 2 (TP₂) in call options and the reverse sign rule of order 2 (RR₂) in put options within the S&P 500 index. By examining the empirical significance and occurrence patterns of these violations, the research identifies potential trading opportunities. The findings demonstrate that while these conditions are mostly satisfied, violations can be strategically exploited for consistent positive returns, providing practical insights into profitable trading strategies. The third study addresses the fairness of regulatory stress tests, which are crucial for assessing the capital adequacy of banks. The uniform application of stress test models across diverse banks raises concerns about fairness and accuracy. This study proposes a method to aggregate individual models into a common framework, balancing forecast accuracy and equitable treatment. The research demonstrates that estimating and discarding centered bank fixed effects leads to more reliable and fair stress test outcomes. The conclusions of these studies highlight the importance of understanding the behavior of commonly used models in handling imbalanced data, the strategic exploitation of option pricing anomalies for profitable trading, and the need for fair regulatory practices to ensure financial stability. Together, these findings contribute to a deeper understanding of data science in finance, offering practical insights for regulators, financial institutions, and traders.

本文主要換討SOX之後宣告重編公司之經濟後果。探討如下議題:(1)信用評等是否/如何反應公司的重編資訊;(2)重編內涵與經理人異動之關聯性;(3)經理人異動、信用評等改變以及重編嚴重性三者之關聯性。 / Following the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), the increasing occurrence of accounting restatements has drawn considerable attention concerning the financial statement quality and adverse consequences of accounting restatements from investors, regulators, auditors and business communities. The primary purpose of this research is to investigate the economic consequences of accounting restatements announced after SOX based on their relations with credit ratings and management turnover. To examine the following research issues of (1) whether and how the credit rating reacts to companies’ restatements, (2) whether restatement characteristics are associated with management turnover, and (3) what the association among management turnover, credit ratings, and restatement severity is, I gather data on 1,838 companies that restated financial statements between 1997 and 2005. In the first part of the study, my results provide empirical evidence consistent with the conjecture that higher severity restatements are more likely to be followed by subsequent unfavorable ratings. Furthermore, rating agencies using accounting-based measures to predict the probability of bankruptcy perform better in assessing ratings in the post-SOX period. Moreover, rating agencies give auditor changes a “fresh-look” after SOX. In the second part of the study, the likelihood of CEO/CFO turnover significantly increases for companies with higher restatements of severity, and a CEO is more likely to be terminated if the company credit rating following restatements is downgraded. The results show that there is no “cop a plea” effect and when restatements are prompted by companies, management turnover appears to be more concerned with the dollar amount of overstatement on income and/or restatements affecting core earnings. In addition, when executives window-dress earnings to portray a more favorable earnings picture, they are more likely to be terminated following subsequent financial restatements. Moreover, results also indicate that after SOX companies seem more likely to blame their auditors for restatements of higher severity and dismiss their auditors afterwards to maybe avoid the replacements of management.