This paper provides a comprehensive survey of pertinent issues on sovereign debt restructurings, based on a newly constructed database. This is the first complete dataset of sovereign restructuring cases, covering the six decades from 1950–2010; it includes 186 debt exchanges with foreign banks and bondholders, and 447 bilateral debt agreements with the Paris Club. We present new stylized facts on the outcome and process of debt restructurings, including on the size of haircuts, creditor participation, and legal aspects. In addition, the paper summarizes the relevant empirical literature, analyzes recent restructuring episodes, and discusses ongoing debates on crisis resolution mechanisms, credit default swaps, and the role of collective action clauses.
Credit Default Swaps: A Survey is the most comprehensive review of all major research domains involving credit default swaps (CDS). CDS have been growing in importance in the global financial markets. However, their role has been hotly debated, in industry and academia, particularly since the credit crisis of 2007-2009. The authors review the extant literature on CDS that has accumulated over the past two decades and divide the survey into seven topics after providing a broad overview in the introduction. The second section traces the historical development of CDS markets and provides an introduction to CDS contract definitions and conventions. The third section discusses the pricing of CDS, from the perspective of no-arbitrage principles, structural, and reduced-form credit risk models. It also summarizes the literature on the determinants of CDS spreads, with a focus on the role of fundamental credit risk factors, liquidity and counterparty risk. The fourth section discusses how the development of the CDS market has affected the characteristics of the bond and equity markets, with an emphasis on market efficiency, price discovery, information flow, and liquidity. Attention is also paid to the CDS-bond basis, the wedge between the pricing of the CDS and its reference bond, and the mispricing between the CDS and the equity market. The fifth section examines the effect of CDS trading on firms' credit and bankruptcy risk, and how it affects corporate financial policy, including bond issuance, capital structure, liquidity management, and corporate governance. The sixth section analyzes how CDS impact the economic incentives of financial intermediaries. The seventh section reviews the growing literature on sovereign CDS and highlights the major differences between the sovereign and corporate CDS markets. The eighth section discusses CDS indices, especially the role of synthetic CDS index products backed by residential mortgage-backed securities during the financial crisis. The authors close with our suggestions for promising future research directions on CDS contracts and markets.
Staff Discussion Notes showcase the latest policy-related analysis and research being developed by individual IMF staff and are published to elicit comment and to further debate. These papers are generally brief and written in nontechnical language, and so are aimed at a broad audience interested in economic policy issues. This Web-only series replaced Staff Position Notes in January 2011.
Seit dem Ausbruch der jüngsten Finanzkrise sind Credit Default Swaps (CDS) ins Rampenlicht des akademischen und medialen Interesses gerückt und bilden seitdem den Gegenstand einer kontroversen Diskussion. Auf Europäischer Ebene werden zudem neue regulatorische Rahmenbedingungen eingeführt, die weitreichende Auswirkungen auf den CDS Markt haben werden. Die angesprochenen Kontroversen sowie die bevorstehenden regulatorischen Veränderungen machen den CDS Markt daher zu einem spannenden und wichtigen Forschungsgegenstand. Die vorliegende Dissertation beschäftigt sich in vier Forschungsarbeiten mit den Implikationen des Einsatzes von CDS auf Marktteilnehmer und gibt im speziellen Antworten auf offene Fragen hinsichtlich der Anwendung von Kreditrisikomodellen, des Nutzens und der Risiken von CDS und den Auswirkungen neuer Regulierungen auf den CDS Markt. In Kapitel I werden die theoretischen Grundlagen zur Messung des Kreditrisikos gelegt, wobei der Fokus auf der praktischen Anwendung von Kreditrisikomodellen liegt. Hierbei untersuche ich die zwei gängigsten Kreditrisikomodelle: den firmenwertbasierten sowie den intensitätsbasierten Ansatz. Dabei gewinne ich wichtige Einblicke in den Einsatz von Kreditrisikomodellen im Zusammenhang mit der Nutzung von Kreditderivaten. In Kapitel II werden der Nutzen und die Risiken von CDS unter theoretischen und empirischen Gesichtspunkten einer Analyse unterzogen. Basierend auf der Analyse werden nachfolgend regulatorische Handlungsempfehlungen abgeleitet und diskutiert. Die Ergebnisse zeitigen eine Reihe von Risiken, die sich insbesondere in Krisenzeiten verstärken und daher effektivere zukünftige Regulierungen verlangen. Kapitel III konzentriert sich auf neue regulatorische Anforderungen im CDS Markt. Dabei liegt der Fokus auf der Ausgestaltung der Zentralen Gegenparteien und den Auswirkungen deren Einführung auf die Marktteilnehmer. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Zentrale Gegenparteien ein.
This study provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of the questions of out-of-court debt restructuring from a policy-oriented perspective. The starting point of the analysis is given by the World Bank Principles for Effective Insolvency and Creditor Rights Systems. The study offers an overview of out-of-court restructuring, which is not seen as fundamentally opposed to formal insolvency procedures. Actually, the study contemplates different restructuring techniques as forming a continuum to the treatment of financial difficulties. Thus, from the purely contractual or informal arrangements for debt rescheduling between the debtor and its creditors, to the fully formal reorganization or liquidation procedures, there are numerous intermediate solutions. In the study, these solutions are identified by the terms of enhanced procedures where the contractual arrangements are supported by norms or principles for workouts; and hybrid procedures where the contractual arrangements are supported by the intervention of the courts or an administrative authority. The study discusses the advantages and disadvantages of all the debt restructuring techniques, and concludes, in this regard, that a legal system may contain a number of options a menu that can cover different sets of circumstances. In the end, the law may offer a toolbox with very different instruments that the parties may use depending on the specific facts of the case. A substantial part of the study is devoted to the analysis of the enabling regulatory environment for out-of-court restructuring. It is evident that debt restructuring does not operate in a vacuum: in fact, the general legal system influences and to a certain extent determines the possibilities for debt restructuring in any given jurisdiction. The study provides a checklist that can be used to examine the features of a legal system that bear a direct influence on debt restructuring activities. The different characteristics of informal restructurings, and of enhanced and hybrid debt restructurings are covered by the study. The different approaches to debt restructuring aim at combining the advantages of an informal approach with the advantages of formal procedures: especially, the existence of a moratorium on creditor actions and the binding effects of creditor agreements concluded within the insolvency process.
It has been 15 years since the first edition of Stochastic Integration and Differential Equations, A New Approach appeared, and in those years many other texts on the same subject have been published, often with connections to applications, especially mathematical finance. Yet in spite of the apparent simplicity of approach, none of these books has used the functional analytic method of presenting semimartingales and stochastic integration. Thus a 2nd edition seems worthwhile and timely, though it is no longer appropriate to call it "a new approach". The new edition has several significant changes, most prominently the addition of exercises for solution. These are intended to supplement the text, but lemmas needed in a proof are never relegated to the exercises. Many of the exercises have been tested by graduate students at Purdue and Cornell Universities. Chapter 3 has been completely redone, with a new, more intuitive and simultaneously elementary proof of the fundamental Doob-Meyer decomposition theorem, the more general version of the Girsanov theorem due to Lenglart, the Kazamaki-Novikov criteria for exponential local martingales to be martingales, and a modern treatment of compensators. Chapter 4 treats sigma martingales (important in finance theory) and gives a more comprehensive treatment of martingale representation, including both the Jacod-Yor theory and Emery’s examples of martingales that actually have martingale representation (thus going beyond the standard cases of Brownian motion and the compensated Poisson process). New topics added include an introduction to the theory of the expansion of filtrations, a treatment of the Fefferman martingale inequality, and that the dual space of the martingale space H^1 can be identified with BMO martingales. Solutions to selected exercises are available at the web site of the author, with current URL http://www.orie.cornell.edu/~protter/books.html.
Corporate credit growth in China has been excessive in recent years. This credit boom is related to the large increase in investment after the Global Financial Crisis. Investment efficiency has fallen and the financial performance of corporates has deteriorated steadily, affecting asset quality in financial institutions. The corporate debt problem should be addressed urgently with a comprehensive strategy. Key elements should include identifying companies in financial difficulties, proactively recognizing losses in the financial system, burden sharing, corporate restructuring and governance reform, hardening budget constraints, and facilitating market entry. A proactive strategy would trade off short-term economic pain for larger longer-term gain.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.
This paper analyzes the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders (CFB), an association of British investors holding bonds issued by foreign governments. The CFB played a key role during the heyday of international bond finance, 1870-1913, and in the aftermath of the defaults of the 1930s. It fostered coordination among creditors, especially in cases of default, arranging successfully for many important debt restructurings, though failing persistently in a few cases. While a revamped creditor association might once again help facilitate creditor coordination, the relative appeal of defection over coordination is greater today than it was in the past. The CFB may have had an easier time than any comparable body would have today.
The Global Financial Stability Report examines current risks facing the global financial system and policy actions that may mitigate these. It analyzes the key challenges facing financial and nonfinancial firms as they continue to repair their balance sheets. Chapter 2 takes a closer look at whether sovereign credit default swaps markets are good indicators of sovereign credit risk. Chapter 3 examines unconventional monetary policy in some depth, including the policies pursued by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, and the U.S. Federal Reserve.
