Background: Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) has been linked with later metabolic abnormalities in offspring due to subsequent overweight and obesity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a paucity of data on the outcomes of children exposed to GDM in utero. Aims: The primary aim of this sub-study was to investigate the prevalence of overweight and obesity in 5 and 6-year-old children from GDM complicated pregnancies and macrosomia at birth in the same cohort. The secondary aim was to identify risk factors associated with overweight and obesity in these 5 and 6-year-old children. Outcome measures: The main outcome was the prevalence of overweight and obesity in these children as measured by their age-specific body mass index (BMI) and Z-scores. Additionally, the association between other risk factors, overweight and obesity was investigated. Methods: A cross-sectional sub-study design was employed nested within a larger study that is investigating the progression to type 2 diabetes in women managed for GDM during 2010 and 2011. Mothers who participated in the larger study were informed about the sub-study and invited to allow their children to participate in the sub-study. Written informed consent was obtained from the mothers for the sub-study. The following data were collected: anthropometric data at birth and pregnancy related information from the mothers’ hospital record, additional demographic, social and medical information by questionnaire from the mother and at the research center. In addition, the children were weighed and had their height measured using standardized methods. Anthropometry was standardized using WHO standards. Risk factors for overweight and obesity were tested using a BMI>1 Z-score cut-off, (as a binary variable) in a manual multivariate logistic regression model. Results: The sub-study recruited 176 participants; 78 boys (44.3%) and 98 girls (55.7%). The mean (SD) Z-scores for the children’s anthropometry at ages 5 to 6 years were 0.28 (1.40) for weight, 0.01 (1.07) for height and 0.37 (1.63) for BMI. The overall prevalence of macrosomia at birth (birth weight>4000 gm) was 12.3 % (95% CI 8.2-9.1). The overall prevalence of overweight in the 5 and 6-year-old children was 13.4% (95% CI 8.6-20.4), while the prevalence of obesity was 14.2% (95% CI 9.2-21.2). The combined prevalence of overweight and obesity was 27.6% (95% CI 20.6-35.9). The prevalence of macrosomia (P=0.53) or overweight/obesity proportions (P=0.37) at ages 5 to 6 years did not differ by gender. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, factors independently associated with the risk of overweight and obesity were: mothers’ oral glucose tolerance test 2-hour blood glucose level during pregnancy (AOR=2.06, 95% CI 1.14-3.74, P=0.02), birth weight (AOR=1.00, 95% CI 1.00-1.00, P=0.01), child’s age in years (AOR=0.03, 95% CI 0.002-0.29, P=0.004) and number of adults in the house (AOR=0.38, 95% CI 0.17-0.86, P=0.02). Conclusion: This is the first study to report the prevalence of overweight and obesity in children born from GDM complicated pregnancies, in the Western Cape, South Africa. The combined prevalence of overweight and obesity found in 5 and 6-year-old children exposed to GDM in the Western Cape is higher than overweight and obesity in children reported in other South African studies. This can imply a higher tendency towards overweight and obesity in children exposed to GDM which needs further exploration.

信用評等機構對於企業與市場投資者而言有著重要且無可取代的功能，其所提供之信用評等資訊應當是許多市場投資者所仰賴的重要決策依據，但近年來，卻有許多外界聲浪質疑信評機構評等之準確性，本論文之研究目的即是希望從錨定效應此一行為偏誤之觀點切入，探討國內信評機構在對企業評等時，是否會受到錨定效應影響，導致評等調整不正確或是評等落後其他財務指標等現象發生。 研究結果顯示，國內信評機構對受評企業之過往財務資訊存在錨定現象，但不至於大幅影響整體違約風險之準確性，且信評機構對受評企業財務之惡化較為敏感。另一方面，本研究也發現，信評機構對於非上市櫃公司、金融業以及初次評等等級在「twAA」以上企業之評等，存在較為明顯之錨定現象。 / Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) play a major role in the financial market. Credit rating purport to provide investors with valuable information they need to make decisions about investing, but the accuracy of the rating itself has been called into question by many investors in recent years. The purpose of this study is to examine the anchoring effect on CRAs while the rating is being given. The results indicate that domestic CRAs tend to be anchored on the past financial information of the issuers. But the impacts are very slightly. Besides this, CRAs seem relatively sensitive to the financial deterioration. Moreover, the anchoring effect are much more significant when the debt issuers are private firms, financial institutions or the companies with greater or equal to twAA initial credit rating.

Dans un contexte où l'importance de la Responsabilité Sociale des Entreprises (RSE) va croissante, cette thèse explore la relation entre la RSE et plusieurs attributs financiers des entreprises comme l'information spécifique incorporée dans le prix des actions, le risque de détresse financière des entreprises et le niveau de crédit commercial. Les chercheurs en finance d'entreprise présentent deux points de vue opposés sur la RSE: "Faire le bien est bon pour les affaires" et "La RSE crée des problèmes d'agence". Le premier chapitre aborde brièvement les théories analysant les répercussions financière de la RSE et met en évidence les avantages financiers concomitants aux pratiques responsables. Les entreprises socialement responsables améliorent l'environnement informationnel ce qui complète l'information financière. Dans le deuxième chapitre, nous montrons que la RSE joue un rôle important dans l'amélioration de l'information incorporée dans les cours boursiers. Une meilleure performance RSE est appréciée par les investisseurs et les gestionnaires d'actifs et améliore la disponibilité des financements. Le troisième chapitre explique que les entreprises peuvent atténuer leur risque de détresse financière (Z-score) en améliorant leur performance en matière de RSE. Des entreprises plus responsables promeuvent de meilleures relations avec les parties prenantes grâce à un objectif de confiance et de maximisation de la valeur. Dans le quatrième chapitre, nous constatons que les entreprises socialement responsables ont un meilleur accès au financement (côté fournisseur du crédit commercial) et font plus confiance à leurs clients (côté acheteur du crédit commercial). Par conséquent, cette dissertation fournit un ensemble de résultats soulignant la pertinence et l'importance de "Faire le bien est bon pour les affaires". / In the context of the rapidly growing importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), this dissertation explores the relationship between CSR and firm financial attributes, like stock price informativeness, financial distress risk, and trade credit. First chapter briefly discusses the theories of CSR and highlights the financial advantages of favorable CSR practices. Corporate finance researchers present two opposite views on CSR, “Doing good is good for business” and “CSR creates agency problems”. In the second chapter, we testify this association and find that CSR plays an important role to improve the information impounding in stock prices. Socially responsible firms improve the financial information environment. Third chapter elaborates that firms can mitigate their financial distress risk (Z-score) through improved CSR performance. Firm better CSR performance is appreciated by the investors and asset managers and it improves the availability of finance. In fourth chapter, we find that socially responsible firms have better access to finance (supplier side of trade credit) and have more trust on their stakeholders (buyer side of trade credit). Better CSR firms promote the better relationship with stakeholders through trust and value maximization goal. Therefore, this dissertation provides evidence on the importance of “Doing good is good for business”.

Problem: Konkurser drar med sig höga kostnader på olika sätt, och genom åren har många försök gjorts att finna modeller som kan förutse konkurser och därigenom undvika dem. Några av de mest beprövade modellerna är Altmans olika Z-scoremodeller, som genom åren visat olika resultat. Allt fler företag blir också verksamma inom tjänstesektorn, och forskningen menar att dessa företag skiljer sig från tillverkande företag när det gäller dess nyckeltal, vilket alltså borde påverka möjligheterna att förutse konkurser enligt de modeller som idag finns. Syfte: Kontrollera huruvida Altmans Z´´-scoremodell fungerar på små- och medelstora tjänsteföretag i Sverige, men även om korrelation mellan ett företags kreditbetyg och dess Z´´-score föreligger. Metod: Uppsatsen är skriven utifrån ett positivistiskt synsätt med deduktiv ansats, och bygger på kvantitativ sekundärdata. Analyser görs genom hypotesprövning. Slutsats: Altmans Z´´-scoremodell fungerar dåligt på tjänsteföretag inom segmentet små- och medelstora företag i Sverige. Resultatet blir detsamma, även om modellen tillämpas på    tillverkande företag och handelsföretag. Däremot går det se skillnad på nyckeltal i företag försatta i konkurs och friska företag, bland annat genom att konkursföretag har sämre lönsamhet, balanslikviditet och skuldsättningsgrad. Fortsatt forskning: Forskningen går isär när det gäller möjligheterna att förutse konkurser, och det finns fortfarande många aspekter att pröva. Förslag på fortsatt forskning är därför att undersöka hur nyckeltalen verkligen skiljer sig åt, och om det därigenom är möjligt att undvika konkurser. Ytterligare alternativ kan vara att undersöka variablerna i Z´´-scoremodellen, och eventuellt justera dessa för bättre utfall. / Problem: Bankruptcy is associated with a high cost in different ways, and over the years, many attempts have been made to find models that can predict failures and thru that avoid them. Some of the most proven models are Altmans Z-score in various forms, which over the years have shown different results. More and more companies work with services, and research says that these companies differ from manufacturing companies when it comes to its economic ratios, which should affect the possibilities in predicting bankruptcy according to today available models. Purpose: Check whether the Altman Z´´-score model works on small- and medium-sized services companies in Sweden, but also check if correlation exist between a company's credit rating and its Z´´-score. Method: The thesis is written with a positivist and deductive approach, based on quantitative secondary data. Analyses are made by hypothesis testing. Conclusion: Altman's Z´´-score does not work on small- and medium-sized service companies in Sweden. The result is the same, even if the model is applied to manufacturing and trading companies. However, it is possible to see differences between bankrupt companies and healthy companies. Some ratios that show differences are profitability, balance sheet liquidity and leverage, which all are lower in bankrupt companies. Continued research: Researchers are divided when it comes to the possibilities to predict bankruptcy, and there are still many aspects to consider. Suggestions for continued researchis to examine how ratios really differ, and if it is thru that is possible to avoid bankruptcy. Another angle might be to examine the variables of the Z´´-score-model, and maybe adjust them for more accurate result.

Bakgrund: Många företag går i konkurs varje år vilket är förknippade med kostnader för de enskilda intressenterna och för samhället i stort. För att kunna vidta eventuella åtgärder innan konkursen är ett faktum är det av intresse att veta om någon av de modeller som forskare tagit fram för att förutspå konkurser faktiskt fungerar. Syfte: Syftet med denna undersökning är att ta reda på om det går att applicera någon av ett urval av etablerade konkursmodeller på svenska industri- och tillverkningsföretag. Teori: Studien kommer att testa tre olika forskares modeller och metoder: Altmans, Platts och Platts samt Pompes och Bilderbeeks. Metod: I denna studie kommer enbart en deduktiv forskningsansats att användas och datainsamlingen är kvantitativ då nyckeltal hämtas från de aktuella företagens årsredovisningar. Urvalet baseras på de företag som ansökte om konkurs under år 2011 och de som representerar kontrollgruppen har slumpmässigt valts ut bland de företag inom avgränsningen som inte gått i konkurs det aktuella året. Resultat och slutsats: Altmans och Platts och Platts modeller visar sig inte vara applicerbara på svenska företag. Dock är vissa av Pompes och Bilderbeeks nyckeltal tillämpliga till att använda för konkursprognostisering för svenska företag. / Background: Companies are going bankrupt every year which is associated with costs for individual parties with interests in the company and for society in general. To be able to take any action before bankruptcy is a fact, it is interesting to know if any of the models that scientists developed to predict bankruptcies actually works. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine whether it is possible to apply a selection of the established bankruptcy models on Swedish manufacturing companies. Theory: The study will test three different researchers' models and methods: Altman's, Platt's and Platt's, as well as Pompe's and Bilderbeek's. Methodology: In this study, only a deductive research approach will be used and the data collection is quantitative since the ratios are obtained from the relevant companies' financial statements. The selection is based on the companies that filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and the firms which represent the control group were selected at random among the companies within the delimitation that didn't go bankrupt during the current year. Result and conclusion: Altmans and Platts and Platts models turn out not to be applicable on Swedish companies. Some of Pompes and Bilderbeeks ratios are relevant for use in bankruptcy prediction for Swedish companies though.

In this thesis presents the results obtained in the treatment of the topic The Creation of an Internal Control System in the select company. The Internal Control System is examined from the perspective of the COSO model which evaluates the quality of the internal control at various levels in the company. On the survey of the disertation are valorized risk areas of the company. There are also proposed individuals suggestions for the solutions of the risk areas including the draft internal regulation. The company was also investigated using Altman's Z-Score model that evaluated its financial health.

L’objectif de cette thèse est de répondre à trois questions de recherche, peu explorées dans la littérature. Le but de notre premier essai est d’examiner la relation entre le développement financier islamique et la croissance économique, en utilisant un échantillon de 15 pays sur une période allant de 2000 vers 2009. Les résultats de l’estimation du modèle à effet fixe, variable instrumentale et GMM en différence montrent que le développement financier islamique a un impact positif sur la croissance économique. Les résultats du modèle semi-paramétrique prouvent que l’impact du développement financier islamique sur la croissance économique puisse être non linéaire. Notre deuxième essai s’intéresse à étudier l’effet de la crise des subprimes de 2007-2008 sur les banques islamiques portant sur 70 banques, réparties entre 43 banques classiques et 27 banques islamiques pendant la période 2005-2009. Les résultats prouvent qu’il n’y a pas de différence significative en termes d’effet de la crise sur la solidité des banques islamiques et conventionnelles. Dans notre troisième essai, nous nous s’intéressons à analyser la volatilité des indices boursiers islamiques par rapport à leurs consorts conventionnels. Cinq indices islamiques ont fait l’objet de cette étude ainsi que leurs consorts conventionnels. L’étude couvre la période : 2/02/2009-12/02/2014. Les résultats du test de Granger détectent différentes relations causales. Ainsi, Les résultats du modèle Garch montrent que quatre parmi les cinq indices islamiques sont moins volatiles que leurs consorts conventionnels tandis qu’un seul indice islamique est plus volatile que son consort conventionnel. / This dissertation contains three essays on different issues on mergers and acquisitions, left unexplored or unresolved by the existing literature. The first study examine the relationship between Islamic finance development and economic growth in a panel of 15 MENA and Sout-est-asia countries over the 2000-2009 period, using a variety of econometric methods and four standard measures of Islamic financial development. The study identifies two sets of findings. First, fixed effects estimation, panel-data-instrument variables regressions and GMM-difference estimator reveal that the relationship between Islamic financial development and economic growth is positive. The semiparametric panel model shows that there is evidence of nonlinearity in the data. The second study, assess empirically the effect of the 2007-2008 subprime financial crisis on Islamic banks using a sample of 27 Islamic banks and 43 conventional banks during the period from 2005 to 2009. Using the Z-score as indicator of bank stability the results of our regression analysis show that there is no difference in terms of the effect of the financial crisis on the soundness of Islamic bank and their conventional counterparts. The third study aims to examine the volatility of Islamic stock index compared to their conventional counterparts. Five major Islamic stock indexes have been the subject of our third study as well as their conventional counterparts. Covering a time period from 12/02/2009 to 12/02/2014. The application of Granger causality tests detected different causalities during the period, between the returns series under study. Employing Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedastic (GARCH), our results indicate that, four among five Islamic stock indexes were less volatile than their conventional counterparts. But, one Islamic index are more volatile than their conventional counterpart.

[pt] Os estudos de modelos de previsão de falência tiveram seu início há quase 90 anos, sempre com o intuito de ser uma ferramenta de gestão útil para analistas e gestores das empresas. Embora as primeiras pesquisas sejam antigas, o assunto continua atual. Diversos setores da economia passaram, ou passam, por crises ao longo do tempo e não foi diferente para a indústria de aviação. Nesse contexto, o presente trabalho usou dados históricos de indicadores financeiros das empresas aéreas americanas de um período de três décadas para elaborar quatro modelos de previsão de falência e comparar suas performances preditivas com o Modelo Z-Score. Todas as elaborações foram calibragens do Modelo Z-Score, usando técnicas de simulação e estatística. Duas usaram Análise Discriminante Múltipla (MDA) e duas utilizaram Bootstrap junto com MDA. Um par de cada método utilizou as variáveis originais do Modelo Z-Score e o outro par apresentou sugestão de novo conjunto de variáveis. Os resultados mostraram que o modelo de previsão mais preciso, com 75,0 porcento de acerto na amostra In-Sample e 79,2 porcento na Out-of-Sample, utilizou o conjunto original de variáveis e as técnicas Bootstrap e MDA. / [en] Studies of bankruptcy prediction models started almost 90 years ago, with the intention of being a useful management tool for analysts and managers. Although the first researches are ancient, the subject remains current. Several sectors of the economy have experienced, or are experiencing, crises over time and the aviation industry is no exception. In this context, the present work used historical data of financial indicators of American airlines over a period of three decades to develop four models of bankruptcy forecast and compared their predictive performances with the Z-Score Model. All proposed models were calibrations of the Z-Score model, using simulation and statistical techniques. Two models were generated using Discriminant Analyzes Multiple (MDA) and two using Bootstrap along with MDA. A pair of each method used the original variables of the model s Z-Score and the other pair presented a novel set of variables. Results showed that the most accurate forecasting model, with 75.0 percent accuracy in-sample and 79.2 percent out-of-sample, used the original variables of the model s Z-Score and the Bootstrap e MDA techniques.

Contingent claims models have recently been applied to the field of corporate insolvency prediction in an attempt to provide the art with a theoretical methodology that has been lacking in the past. Limited studies have been carried out in order to empirically compare the performance of these “market” models with that of their accounting number-based counterparts. This thesis contributes to the literature in several ways: The thesis traces the evolution of the art of corporate insolvency prediction from its inception through to the present day, combining key developments and methodologies into a single document of reference. I use receiver operating characteristic curves and tests of economic value to assess the efficacy of sixteen models, carefully selected to represent key moments in the evolution of the art, and tested upon, for the first time, post-IFRS UK data. The variability of model efficacy is also measured for the first time, using Monte Carlo simulation upon 10,000 randomly generated training and validation samples from a dataset consisting of over 12,000 firmyear observations. The results provide insights into the distribution of model accuracy as a result of sample selection, which is something which has not appeared in the literature prior to this study. I find overall that the efficacy of the models is generally less than that reported in the prior literature; but that the theoretically driven, market-based models outperform models which use accounting numbers; the latter showing a relatively larger efficacy distribution. Furthermore, I obtain the counter-intuitive finding that predictions based on a single ratio can be as efficient as those which are based on models which are far more complicated – in terms of variable variety and mathematical construction. Finally, I develop and test a naïve version of the down-and-out-call barrier option model for insolvency prediction and find that, despite its simple formulation, it performs favourably compared alongside other market-based models.

The aim of this study is to measure the effectiveness of Altman’s Z-Score model using Non-performing assets (NPA) as a benchmark stability indicator. To do that, this paper examines if Altman’s Z Score Models capture the decline in financial health of the banks caused by the NPAs, using a two-fold analysis i.e., in advance through prediction and when the distress period is ongoing. The findings of this paper would suggest that: 1. During the distress period: The Z-Scores only marginally capture the distress caused by the NPAs, which is in line the findings of Almamy et al that the predictive ability of the model goes down during the crisis period. 2. For the future: The results of the statistical t-tests indicate that, the Z-Scores do not have the predictive ability to capture the future NPAs. Two different models that are developed by Altman - one for non-manufacturing firms and the other for the emerging markets, are used to test, if one model is more suitable than the other to the Indian banking sector. The findings of this paper suggest that, due to the uniqueness of the Indian banking sector during the NPA crisis, the ‘Emerging market model’, does not produce any significantly better results. Therefore, there is further scope to develop a tailor-made model suitable to the Indian banking sector.