This book introduces the “strike of default” (SOD) benchmark concept. The author determines the SOD through cross-sectional pricing between the credit market and the option market, considering the same underlying. The idea of the SOD is to combine the implied probability of default from both...

This paper first provides a simple but very general framework for credit portfolio modellingwhich is based on the distinction between systematic and unsystematic risk. Unsystematicor borrower-specific risk vanishes through diversification in a very large, infinitelyfine-grained portfolio. The...

Value at risk (VaR) is today the standard tool in risk management for banks and other financial institutions. It is defined as the worst loss for a given confidence level: For a confidence level of e.g. p=99%, one is 99% certain that at the end of a chosen risk horizon there will be no greater...