In 2004 the Basel Committee published an extensive revision of the capital charges which creates more risk sensitive capital requirements for banks. The New Accord called International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standard provides in its first pillar for a finer measurement of...

The legal environment for Securities Prospectuses in Germany has changed dramatically with the implementation of the German Securities Prospectus Act (Wertpapierprospektgesetz - WpPG) and the Commission Regulation (EC) No. 809/2004 of 29 April 2004 (Prospectus Regulation) regulating their...

The Paper shows the evaluation of credit risky products. Default probabilities for brisk adjusted cash flows or risk adjusted discounting are the backbones for the evaluation of bonds and credits. The second approach is using the market value of shares and their implied volatility to calculate...

The aim of portfolio insurance strategies is to put a floor on the value of a stock portfolio by progressively selling stocks and buy safe, short-term debt securities as stock prices fall. This paper analyzes the current static and dynamic methods in use and explains their pros and cons.

Das aus der amerikanischen Wirtschaft stammende Konzept der Shopping-Mall ist in der realen Welt längst etabliert. In der virtuellen Welt befinden sich derartige Einkaufszentren jedoch erst in den Anfangsstadien. Eine elektronische Shopping-Mall kann z.B. im interaktiven Fernsehen oder im...

Most research on the performance and risk of hedge funds are based on calculations that just use the data from one index provider. Also most product providers and even more and more investors are using hedge fund indices for benchmarking purposes. As some academic articles pointed out, the world...

Investment decisions of cooperative banks are very restricted to their risk capacity. A well defined and organised Risk Management Process supports those investment activities and assists to achieve a balanced situation between risk and return. Several ways can be chosen to allocate risk...

The report deals with the current legal questions relating to the trading, working out and outsourcing of non-performing loans. Within this framework the basic legal provisions and the problems arising therefrom, for example, in the area of data protection or banking secrecy, are explained and...

The investment in commodities is starting to be more important during the last years. The paper describes the characteristics of financially important commodities. In many cases a passive investment in an index is most suitable. As the GSCI is found to be the most important, its underlying...

The paper discusses the impact of the Basel II Accord on the financing of small and medium size enterprises (SME) in Austria. Although the Basel II Accord has not been established yet, the study tries to evaluate the expected impact of the Basel II Accord on SMEs, on the bases of the current...