Private Equity restructuring of companies using debt finance has been criticised for increasing financial distress and bankruptcy in the corporate sector and this was especially so in the aftermath of the financial crisis. We build a unique data set comprising the population of over eight...

Poor corporate governance can damage the interests of shareholders, and may lead to company collapse. Previous studies in credit risk prediction provide no consensus as to which and how corporate governance variables determine bankruptcy. This paper is the first to apply a discrete time hazard...

Default probability is a fundamental variable determining the credit worthiness of a firm and equity volatility estimation plays a key role in its evaluation. Assuming a structural credit risk modeling approach, we study the impact of choosing different non parametric equity volatility...

This document describes the development of a financial health indicator based on companies' financial statements. This indicator is conceived as a weighted combination of variables, which is obtained through a model discriminating between failing firms and non-failing firms. The definition of...

We propose an econometric model for predicting the share of bank debt held by bankrupt firms by combining a novel set of firm-level financial variables and macroeconomic indicators. Our firm-level data include payment remarks in the form of debt collections from private agencies and attachments...

Four new ratios, that capture firms' Stability, Downside Risk and Audit Quality, are significant predictors of financial distress as evidenced by bankruptcy. Moreover, they improve substantially a logit based credit metric when combined with other classic ratios. A credit metric that comprises a...

Banks entering an emerging market face a lot of uncertainty about the risks involved in lending. We use a unique unbalanced panel of nearly 700 short-term loans made to SMEs in Slovakia between January 2000 and June 2005. Of the loans granted, on average 6.0 per cent of the firms defaulted....

Financial markets in emerging economies are often perceived as more risky than those in developed countries. We investigate whether this is true for loans to SMEs using a unique unbalanced panel of nearly 700 loans made to SMEs in Slovakia between 2000 and 2005. Several probit and panel probit...

Credit risk is the main risk in the banking sector and is as such one of key issues for financial stability. We estimate various PD models and use them in the application to credit rating classification. Models include firm specific characteristics and macroeconomic or time effects. By linking...