Exchange Rates and Sovereign Risk

An increase in a country’s sovereign risk, as measured by credit default swap spreads, is accompanied by a contemporaneous depreciation of its currency and an increase of its volatility. The relation between currency excess returns and sovereign risk is mainly driven by default expectations (rather than distress risk premia) and exposure to global sovereign risk shocks and also emerges in a predictive setting for currency risk premia. We show that a sovereign risk factor is priced in the cross-section of currency returns and that it is not subsumed by the carry factor. This paper was accepted by David Simchi-Levi, finance.

Investor Herding and Spillovers in African Debt Markets

Using high-frequency data for sovereign long-term bond yields and five-year credit default swap spreads, we estimate a regression model to identify a nonlinear link between cross-section deviation of market yield and extreme movements in African markets and other regions. Results indicate that African sovereign bonds have been subject to herding. International investors tend to lump African sovereign bonds into one asset class, pricing risk based on regional market performance instead of individual countries' performance. More over, we find evidence of herding spillovers from other regions. Africa is the most vulnerable of developing regions to shifts in market sentiment.

The Impact of Stronger Shareholder Control on Bondholders

We study the impact of stronger shareholder control on bondholders. We find that the passage of shareholder-sponsored governance proposals causes a decline in credit default swap spreads, indicating a net positive effect on bondholders. Evidence suggests that the direct benefit of stronger shareholder control, through the “management disciplining” channel, is larger than the combined adverse effects of directly escalating shareholder-bondholder conflict and indirectly exacerbating exposure to shareholder opportunism. Results are stronger for firms with existing high levels of shareholder-bondholder conflict and for proposals that mitigate managerial entrenchment without exacerbating risk-shifting. Finally, stronger shareholder control improves credit ratings and operating performance in the long-term.

A Raroc Valuation Scheme for Loans and Its Application in Loan Origination

In this article, a risk-adjusted return on capital (RAROC) valuation scheme for loans is derived. The critical assumption throughout the article is that no market information on a borrower’s credit quality like bond or CDS (Credit Default Swap) spreads is available. Therefore, market-based approaches are not applicable, and an alternative combining market and statistical information is needed. The valuation scheme aims to derive the individual cost components of a loan which facilitates the allocation to a bank’s operational units. After its introduction, a theoretical analysis of the scheme linking the level of interest rates and borrower default probabilities shows that a bank should only originate a loan, when the interest rate a borrower is willing to accept is inside the profitability range for this client. This range depends on a bank’s internal profitability target and is always a finite interval only or could even be empty if a borrower’s credit quality is too low. Aside from analyzing the theoretical properties of the scheme, we show how it can be directly applied in the daily loan origination process of a bank.