I corporate equity warrant rappresentano un affascinante metodo di finanziamento “ibrido” disponibile per le imprese. In prima approssimazione, un warrant è assimilabile ad una opzione call e, pertanto, il pricing è spesso effettuato applicando le formule di valutazione sviluppate per tali strumenti dalla teoria finanziaria. Tuttavia, la valutazione dei warrant presenta complicazioni ulteriori rispetto alla determinazione del prezzo di opzioni call, e la ragione risiede principalmente in alcuni elementi distintivi di maggiore complessità, tra cui l’effetto diluitivo del capitale esistente derivante dall’esercizio, ed il c.d. effetto “risk-shifting”, in base al quale si verifica un trasferimento di rischio sistematico dagli azionisti ai possessori di warrant, non appena questi strumenti vengono emessi. L’obiettivo di questa tesi è di analizzare il tema dell’emissione dei corporate warrant dal punto di vista della finanza d’impresa e derivare un metodo di pricing innovativo per tener conto di un fenomeno (risk-shifting effect) tuttora non considerato dalla letteratura finanziaria. Dopo aver derivato formalmente tale approccio e le formule ad esso conseguenti, il lavoro propone una simulazione teorica ed un test empirico condotto su un campione di warrant quotati sul mercato italiano. Entrambi tali verifiche dimostrano come il modello presentato incorpori una maggiore bontà previsiva del prezzo di mercato rispetto agli approcci esistenti. / Corporate equity warrants are one of the more fascinating capital-raising tools available to corporate finance officers. At a first approximation, they are option-like securities and according to this similarity, the pricing is usually performed by application of the standard option pricing theory. However, the theoretical and empirical analysis of warrants still remains an interesting research field within the finance literature. The reason is that warrants are more complex than call options. From an asset pricing point of view, the presence of some specific features (e.g., the equity dilution) prevents from using simple plain-vanilla formulas, while from a corporate finance standpoint, warrants offer several implications, principally because they affect the systematic risk of common stocks and are related to the choice of the firm’s capital structure. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse corporate warrants and address some of the main open questions about their value. In particular, after reviewing the financial literature about warrant pricing and presenting some commonly accepted formulas, the relationship between warrants and the volatility of the underlying stock return is examined. Contrarily to the classical call options, in fact, warrants affect the capital structure of the issuing firm and produce a risk-shifting effect among equity claimants. We derive an alternative approach to pricing equity warrant, embedding this risk-shifting feature, and we propose both a theoretical simulation and an empirical test based on a sample of Italian warrants proving its accuracy.

由於忽略員工認股選擇權的稀釋性會造成偏誤的企業評價，本研究利用以認購權證為基礎的改良評價模型，並配合會計研究的剩餘淨利模型，欲探討Warrant-Pricing Model與 Black-Scholes-Model之差異。由於現行國際會計準則與美國會計準則都已明確規定員工認股選擇權需依公平價值認列為費用，我國會計公報未來必定朝此方向修改，為因應使用公平價值法對員工認股權評價，本文對於財報附註揭露之表達提出建議，以提供會計人員與審計人員進行財務報表編製與查核工作時為參考。 / Because employee stock option (ESO) has some special conditions which make them different from all the options transferring in markets, we can not use the general option pricing model, such as: Black-Scholes-Model, to price ESO. By using Warrant-Pricing Model and the residual income model, this research introduces us the differences between Warrant-Pricing Model and Black-Scholes-Model. Moreover this research leads to the conclusion that Warrant-Pricing Model can price ESO more properly, and it is helpful in evaluating company equity and pricing stock. This research also provide some advice to auditors and accountants on financial statement disclosures.

>Magister Scientiae - MSc / Warrant pricing has become very crucial in the present market scenario. See, for example, M. Hanke and K. Potzelberger, Consistent pricing of warrants and traded options, Review Financial Economics 11(1) (2002) 63-77 where the authors indicate that warrants issuance affects the stock price process of the issuing company. This change in the stock price process leads to subsequent changes in the prices of options written on the issuing company's stocks. Another notable work is W.G. Zhang, W.L. Xiao and C.X. He, Equity warrant pricing model under Fractional Brownian motion and an empirical study, Expert System with Applications 36(2) (2009) 3056-3065 where the authors construct equity warrants pricing model under Fractional Brownian motion and deduce the European options pricing formula with a simple method. We study this paper in details in this mini-thesis. We also study some of the mathematical models on warrant pricing using the Black-Scholes framework. The relationship between the price of the warrants and the price of the call accounts for the dilution effect is also studied mathematically. Finally we do some numerical simulations to derive the value of warrants.