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The aim of the final thesis is to analyze the risk of trading with financial derivatives. The theoretical part generally describes characteristics of financial derivatives and their use. Practical part illustrates the risk of trading with financial derivatives by analyzing the bankruptcy of Barings Bank and Long-term Capital Management.

Firms operating in the United States face important litigation risk, yet little is known on how this risk affects financial decisions. I use a natural experiment to explore the effect of litigation risk on firms' hedging behavior. I find that firms are more likely to use financial derivatives following an exogenous increase in litigation risk. This finding is stronger in the subset of firms with higher distress costs, lower credit ratings, and higher legal concerns. My results imply that litigation risk can at least partially explain the use of financial derivatives.

The Effects of the Financial Crisis on the Regulation of Financial Markets with a Focus on Securitization Abstract The thesis investigates the influence of the financial crisis on financial markets regulation, with a focus on securitization. In its first part, it attempts to identify the causes of the financial crisis from years 2008 and 2009. It builds up the attention onto the regulatory tendencies of the 20th century from the Great Depression until the 2008 financial crisis. Then it focuses on the monetary policy of central banks, especially the FED in the USA and its influence on the mortgage market.The following part contains a brief description of the development of the US mortgage market and the start of mortgage loan securitization. The chapter of financial crisis also addresses the role of rating agencies in the securitization system and their impact on the creation of toxic assets. The main part of the thesis is dedicated to securitization, where it is analyzed its economic essence, legal definitions and process of securitization, which is further divided into traditional and synthetic securitization. In order to disucuss the synthetic securitization more in depth, one chapter is dedicated to credit derivatives. The securitization process is conluded with the release of ABS as a securitization...

1 Abstract Legal issues of transactions with securities and financial derivatives The aim of this thesis is to analyse valid legal regulations concerning securities and financial derivatives, to compare it with regulations valid before recodification of Czech private law as well as to describe operation of the financial market, where transactions with securities and financial derivatives take place, through analysis of capital market regulation and supervision. The thesis is composed of three main chapters. Chapter One is focused on a definition of the financial market and its structure and further examines the capital market as a part of the financial market. Primary attention is concentrated on capital market regulation and supervision from the perspective of international, European and national law. Conclusion of this chapter deals with the main organizer of the regulated market in the Czech Republic, i.e Prague Stock Exchange. Chapter Two concerns the definitions of securities and their classification according to their forms and types. Shares, as one of the most important type of securities, are covered in more detail. This chapter also outlines issuance of securities and describes main contracts concerning securities. This part also includes a dedicated section on investment instruments embracing both...

1 Abstract This thesis is focused on the financial derivatives. The main goal of this paper is to analyse legal nature of financial derivatives and to present universal definition, general characteristics or utilization of financial derivatives. The other goal of this paper is to describe the development of supervision and regulation before and after The Global Financial Crisis. The thesis is composed of three main chapters. Chapter One is focused on a definition of the financial derivatives as well as the development of derivatives in the fields of history. Chapter Two is dedicated to brief description and explanation of important derivatives types such as forwards, futures, swaps, options and credit derivatives. Chapter Three of this thesis deals with the problems of supervision and regulation of financial derivatives based on American and European law. In response to the causes and effects of The Global Financial Crisis the regulation increased. There were introduced new regulatory legislations which require for example deep transparency of OTC derivatives or settlement of OTC trades through a central counterparty. Key words: financial derivatives, forwards, futures, swaps, options, regulation

This diploma thesis deals with possible usage of financial derivatives in context of government debt risk management, mainly in the Czech Republic. After the opening analysis of government debt development, the thesis describes risks, which are involved in government debt management. After that it handles with quantification of those risks and of their possible securing, especially with respect to financial derivatives usage. This thesis tries to answer the question, whether using financial derivatives in government debt management is reasonable. To solve this I used an analysis of 2010 data, in which I compare profitability of emission of classical bonds compared to emission of so called structured instruments, i.e. joint of classical bond and financial derivative. In conclusion of thesis there is usage of financial derivatives confronted with their negative characteristics as well as with cases of their abuse.

The thesis is presents in detail selected financial derivatives, including interest and currency swaps and other appropriate tools to hedge against interest rate and currency risk. It also shows the accounting and valuation procedures and also leads to the classification of risks associated with the selected instruments. Interpretation and analysis are focused on the economic environment in the Czech Republic and is based on the conventions of the local capital market. Theoretical aspects apply a simple model of interest-sensitive portfolios and examine the effectiveness and validity of two basic methods of quantification and risk management - duration and gap analysis. The aim is to demonstrate the importance of the use of derivatives in risk management in the domestic banking system and to identify strengths and weaknesses in the whole process of applying the two compared methods.

The thesis is focused on financial derivatives, their types, development and practical application. The first chapter deals with the definition of derivatives and description of basic types of derivatives and exotic options. The second chapter describes the development of derivatives in Czech Republic in comparison with G10 countries. In the continuous process of derivative products innovation credit, inflation derivatives and derivatives for electricity and weather are developed. The third chapter presents the derivatives in terms of practical application in the form of option structures, which are used for hedging against the currency risk. The structures are applied to the exchange rate development during the financial crisis period and their impact on businesses is analyzed. Then the hedge efficiency of the structures is analyzed due to use of hedge accounting

The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) has been used in many scientific and engineering applications. The use of FFT for financial derivatives has been gaining momentum in the recent past. In this thesis, i) we have improved a recently proposed model of FFT for pricing financial derivatives to help design an efficient parallel algorithm. The improved mathematical model put forth in our research bridges a gap between quantitative approaches for the option pricing problem and practical implementation of such approaches on modern computer architectures. The thesis goes further by proving that the improved model of fast Fourier transform for option pricing produces accurate option values. ii) We have developed a parallel algorithm for the FFT using the classical Cooley-Tukey algorithm and improved this algorithm by introducing a data swapping technique that brings data closer to the respective processors and hence reduces the communication overhead to a large extent leading to better performance of the parallel algorithm. We have tested the new algorithm on a 20 node SunFire 6800 high performance computing system and compared the new algorithm with the traditional Cooley-Tukey algorithm. Option values are calculated for various strike prices with a proper selection of strike-price spacing to ensure fine-grid integration for FFT computation as well as to maximize the number of strikes lying in the desired region of the stock price. Compared to the traditional Cooley-Tukey algorithm, the current algorithm with data swapping performs better by more than 15% for large data sizes. In the rapidly changing market place, these improvements could mean a lot for an investor or financial institution because obtaining faster results offers a competitive advantages. / October 2004