Following the extra ordinary decision to bail in the unsecured depositors and restructure the two main banks and the near complete destruction of the country’s economic business model as an International Financial Centre, the author considers the changes necessary to rebuild the economy of...

It is argued that lending where the overwhelming criterion is the collateral rather than the repayment capability of the project and the borrower is highly likely to be unproductive and will inevitably lead to a transfer of wealth. If this is done on a systematic and massive scale as was the...

Through this paper the author emphasizes the need for a coherent and multidisciplinary methodology in the assessment of credit risk in corporate lending. It is argued that credit risk should be assessed in the only context that is possible which is through cash flow projections generated by...

When drafting a contract, it is often impossible for the parties to consider and specify in the contract all kinds of unforeseen circumstances. In particular, the parties may not be able to provide a detailed description of the global situation so that the outsiders (courts) could later verify...

We study a dynamic moral hazard setting where the manager has private ev- idence that predicts the firm's cash flows. When performance is low, bad news disclosure is rewarded by a lower borrowing cost relative to the no-evidence case. In contrast, no disclosure is associated with higher...

When firms trade forward contracts with banks to protect foreign currency cash flows against exchange rate movements, foreign exchange risk migrates to the banking sector. We show how this migrated risk may induce systemic repercussions with severe implications for the real economy. For...

We want to assess the relationship between the equity and the debt cost of capital. Using a very simple dividend discount model we compute the implied discount rate and we compare it with the corresponding premium on the corporate credit default swap using a cointegration approach. We...

We study the effects of the reform of the system of severance payments (TFR) of Italian employees on the cost and the access to credit for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). The most direct consequence of the reform is to reduce in the long run the amount of liquid assets available to...

Regulators dedicate much attention to the option that financial institutions in distress have to transfer losses to their creditors. It is generally recognized that the existence of this option provides intermediaries with a powerful incentive to keep firm capital close to the minimal...

This paper provides a detailed empirical study on the use of advance payments by firms. It establishes that some trade credit theories can also be applied to prepayment. The results, obtained from a large panel data set, suggest that financially stronger customers fund the production of their...