...First Questions: 1. What is a default swap? How does it work? A credit default swap (CDS) is a credit derivative which provides insurance against the risk of default by a specific company or reference entity. This is an agreement between two parties stating that the buyer of the CDS, who is taking a short position in the credit event risk, will make a series of payments (known as the spread) to the seller for the full extent of the CDS life or until a credit event occurs, in exchange for a payoff if the underlying loan defaults. The spread of a CDS is the total amount paid per year to buy protection A higher CDS spread is considered to be more likely to default, and thus a higher fee is charge to receive protection against the company. Again, if a default occurs, the seller receives possession of the defaulted loan and the buyer is compensated with the notional amount or face value of the loan. The settlement in the event of defaults involves either physical delivery or a cash payment. Let’s use our case to illustrate how a default swap works. Using a credit default swap, CBI would make a periodic fee payment to First American Bank in exchange for receiving credit protection. First American Bank would assume the credit risk of the additional loan to CapEx Unlimited (CEU) by guaranteeing a payment to CBI if CEU defaulted on its debt. Banks are generally going to be the net buyers of credit protection while insurance companies tend to be selling these contracts. Hedge...
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...Can We Expect A Regulated CDS Market? Derivatives Project Xilin Yang (Celine) Introduction The article introduces credit default swaps and explores the problems of the credit derivatives. By analyzing the AIG’s bailout, the article describes the regulation gap in the CDS market and states the regulation reform after the crisis. Part I is background, generally introduces the Wall Street crisis. How it happened? What consequence it has? Part II is mainly about AIG’s CDS business: how AIG got involved in the crisis and why the biggest world insurance company suddenly collapsed. Part III is about credit default swaps: definition, construction, and problems. Part IV is concerned on the regulation reform after AIG’s failure. Wall Street Crisis Speaking of the Wall Street crisis, people all know it proceed from subprime crisis. The relatively low interest rate prompts banks to issue large amount of housing loans. To transfer default risk embedded in those loans, investment banks package those loans and mortgages into student loans, car loans and credit card debt, which form the so-called collateralized debt obligation (CDOs). All these derivatives depend on the housing loans. In the era of low interest rates, house prices rise rapidly and promote the rapid development of the housing loans business. With steady stream of housing loans into financial derivatives products, different ranks of products are packaged to sale out. The good view of economy makes those potentially risky...
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...Table of Contents Problems with AIG and Credit Default Swaps 1 Financial Crisis 1 Why study AIG case 1 Define what a CDS is and history of AIG 2 AIG background 2 What are Credit default swaps? 3 What happened at AIG? 5 Why is the AIG case so special? 7 Government Reactions 8 Expert Opinion 10 Causes, How it can be Solved, Possible Ways it Can be Prevented 11 Works Cited 14 “Financial derivative products were financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal." -Warren Buffett Problems with AIG and Credit Default Swaps Financial Crisis: Credit derivatives are believed to be one of the primary causes behind the financial crisis in 2008, and they continue to be an existing threat to the global economy in the future. Many economists have indicated that the breakdown in the credit derivatives market was the main reason behind the collapse of large corporations like Lehman brothers and AIG, as opposed to the subprime mortgage market. Why study AIG case: The failure of AIG can be primarily attributed to greed. Like many other insurance companies, AIG was too risky on credit default swaps. By the time of the crisis, the company had written more than $441 billion in swaps on bonds and securities, including mortgage-related securities. The collapse of the mortgage market unveiled the problems of credit derivative products and drew widespread attention to this huge and dangerous market. American International...
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...NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE EFFECTS OF QUANTITATIVE EASING ON INTEREST RATES: CHANNELS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY Arvind Krishnamurthy Annette Vissing-Jorgensen Working Paper 17555 http://www.nber.org/papers/w17555 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 October 2011 We thank Jack Bao, Olivier Blanchard, Greg Duffee, Charlie Evans, Ester Faia, Simon Gilchrist, Robin Greenwood, Monika Piazzesi, David Romer, Thomas Philippon, Tsutomu Watanabe, Justin Wolfers, and participants at seminars and conferences at Brookings, Chicago Fed, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, ECB, San Francisco Fed, Princeton University, Northwestern University, CEMFI, University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), Society for Economic Dynamics, NBER Summer Institute, the NAPA Conference on Financial Markets Research, and the European Finance Association for their suggestions. We thank Kevin Crotty and Juan Mendez for research assistance. This paper was prepared for the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity Fall 2011 issue. We have received an honorarium for the presentation of the paper at Brookings. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. At least one co-author has disclosed a financial relationship of potential relevance for this research. Further information is available online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w17555.ack NBER working papers...
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...Assignment 5 What is a credit default swap (CDS)? How does it work? Do you think it contributed to the 2008 financial crisis? Should it be banned in the market? Basically, credit default swap is a credit derivative which its function is like insurance contract between two counterparties on one or more companies' loan or bond. One party who buys the protection called "protection buyer" has to pay a periodic premium to another party called "protection seller" until expiry of the contract, in return for protection against a credit event (financial difficulty such as bankruptcy, failure to pay or restructuring) of a known reference entity (company). The protection buyer receives protection in form of the right to sell bonds issued by a particular company for their face value or receives principal amount of loan if the company defaults. An example from the case, Charles Bank International (CBI) wanted to lend $50 million to CapEx Unlimited (CEU) company. However, if the amount was lend to CEU, the bank would have high risk exposure to the company and the risk exceeded CBI's risk guidelines. Thus, CBI bought a CDS on CEU company from First American Bank (FAB), these method would mitigate the extra credit risk for CBI from the new $50 million loan. CBI had to pay a periodic fee to FAB until the CDS expired. In this case, if CEU company defaulted before the contract expired, FAB would pay the principal loan amount. The settlement in the event of default involves either "physical...
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...1941 Derivatives and Risk Management Case Write-Up 3: First American Bank: Credit Default Swaps One of Charles Bank International’s (CBI) clients, CapEX Unlimited (CEU), has asked for a new $50 million loan. However, if CBI grants it this loan is exposure to CEU is too large, i.e. the concentration risk exceeds CBI’s internal guidelines. Now, CBI has approached First American Bank (FAB) to see if a credit default swap between FAB and itself can be established, which would mitigate the extra credit risk for CBI from the new loan. What is a default swap? How does it work? Generally, credit derivatives are contracts where the payoff depends on the creditworthiness of one or more companies or countries. These contracts allow firms to trade credit risk in similar to the way they trade market risk. Roughly, credit risk can be defined as the risk that borrowers or counterparties (in derivatives transactions) may default. Credit derivatives can be categorized as single-name or multiname contracts. A credit default swap (CDS) is a single-name credit derivative contract between two counterparties. It provides insurance against the risk of default (credit risk) by a particular company (the reference entity). The buyer of a CDS, who is taking a short position in the credit event risk, makes periodic payments to the seller of the CDS until expiry of the contract or the company defaults (this is known as a credit event). In return, the buyer receives protection in the form of the right to...
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...Sub prime mortgages The origins of the current crisis lie within the ashes of the equity bubble and subsequent collapse of the equity markets at the end of the 1990s With the collapse of the dot.com bubble, capital began to flow increasingly toward the real estate sectors in the United States The U.S. banking sector found mortgage lending highly profitable and saw it as a rapidly expanding market As a result, investment and speculation in the real estate sector increased rapidly As prices rose and speculation continued, a growing number of the borrowers were of lower and lower credit quality These borrowers, and their associated mortgage agreements (sub-prime debt), now carried higher debt service obligations with lower and lower income and cash flow capabilities New market openness and competitiveness allowed many borrowers to qualify for mortgages that they would not have qualified for previously Structurally, some mortgages re-set a high interest rates after a few years or had substantial step-ups in payments after an initial period of interest-only payments Housing bubble The bursting of the U.S. (United States) housing bubble, which peaked in 2006, caused the values of securities tied to U.S. real estate pricing to plummet, damaging financial institutions globally. The financial crisis was triggered by a complex interplay of policies that encouraged home ownership, providing easier access to loans for (lending) borrowers, overvaluation of bundled sub-prime mortgages...
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...serious problem. Operating Income Net Income 1981 99 110 1982 51 -33 % change -48% -130% In the early 1980’s, BF Goodrich needed to raise new funds. However, its credit rating had been downgraded to BBB-. The firm needed $50,000,000 to fund its continuing operations and aimed to lend long-term (8-10 years) debt at a fixed rate. Treasury rates were at 10.1 % and BF Goodrich anticipated paying approximately 12% to 12.5%. The firm was not willing to stipulate an agreement with its current bank, in order not to comprise the flexibility of its future choices. Goodrich wanted a fixed rate, but they believed it would have to pay about 13% for a 30-year corporate debenture. Rabobank Rabobank is one of the largest Dutch banks, consisting of more than 1,000 small agricultural banks. The bank was interested in securing floating rate financing on approximately $50,000,000 in the Eurobond market. Considering their AAA rating, Rabobank could issue fixed rate in the Eurobond market for 11% and for a floating rate of LIBOR plus 25 basis points. Without an active swap market it was common for swaps to be arranged between the two counter parties. Rabobank was interested in the deal but feared the credit risk, as Goodrich’s credit rating had recently been downgraded to a BBB- status. A direct swap would therefore expose Rabobank to credit risk. The two finally reached an agreement to use Morgan Guaranty as an intermediary. The following diagram shows all the transactions. Note: all the observed rates...
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...Cds- First American Bank First Questions: 1. What is a default swap? How does it work? A credit default swap (CDS) is a credit derivative which provides insurance against the risk of default by a specific company or reference entity. This is an agreement between two parties stating that the buyer of the CDS, who is taking a short position in the credit event risk, will make a series of payments (known as the spread) to the seller for the full extent of the CDS life or until a credit event occurs, in exchange for a payoff if the underlying loan defaults. The spread of a CDS is the total amount paid per year to buy protection A higher CDS spread is considered to be more likely to default, and thus a higher fee is charge to receive protection against the company. Again, if a default occurs, the seller receives possession of the defaulted loan and the buyer is compensated with the notional amount or face value of the loan. The settlement in the event of defaults involves either physical delivery or a cash payment. Let’s use our case to illustrate how a default swap works. Using a credit default swap, CBI would make a periodic fee payment to First American Bank in exchange for receiving credit protection. First American Bank would assume the credit risk of the additional loan to CapEx Unlimited (CEU) by guaranteeing a payment to CBI if CEU defaulted on its debt. Banks are generally going to be the net buyers of credit protection while insurance companies tend to be selling...
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...Outlining the major objectives of your essay • Analyse the major factors causing global financial crisis • Analyse the role of OTC derivatives in triggering the global financial crisis • Recommend the ways to control the OTC market in the future The origins of the global financial crisis There are several factors causing global financial crisis: 1. Growth of housing bubble & Subprime lending o particular advantage of low long-term interest rates was the US mortgage market. American households traditionally took out fixed-rate mortgages, often guaranteed by the government-sponsored enterprises, the GSEs. As rates fell, households refinanced in large numbers, but this extra origination business dried up once rates started to rise again. Rather than shrink their business, US mortgage lenders pursued riskier segments of the market that the GSEs did not insure, as Graph 4 shows. This included the sub-prime segment, but also so-called ‘Alt-A’ and other non-standard loans involving easier lending terms. At the time, this was considered a positive development, because it was thought that it allowed more people to become home owners. Products requiring low or no deposit, or with a low introductory interest rate were known as ‘affordability products’. They allowed households to pay the very high housing prices that their own stronger demand was generating. o http://www.rba.gov.au/Speeches/2009/_Images/150409_so_graph4.gif o As the US housing...
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...Spencer Whitworth Ryan Scoville Austin Gray CTP 1: Credit Default Swaps With the financial crisis behind us, it is worth asking whether Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) were a positive development in our economic system. Many blamed the interconnections generated by primary and secondary CDS trading for the implosions that occurred in 2007, when the underlying assets on which the majority of CDSs were based - mortgage-backed securities - began to default. The media agreed, labeling CDSs with terms such as “weapons of mass financial destruction.” There are a number of aspects to CDSs, however, that skeptics and pundits overlooked. While history and intuition suggest important risks associated with CDSs that issuers, owners, and regulators must consider, there are a number of unexpected ways CDSs improve debt capital markets and our economy as a whole. On balance, these benefits shed optimistic perspectives on the merits of CDSs. If markets can learn from past mistakes, the advantages of CDSs render them indispensable financial instruments that contribute to better financing and information-gathering capability in our economy. Contrary to popular belief, the conceptual underpinnings of credit default swaps (CDSs) are surprisingly similar to those of traditional insurance policies. CDSs arose out of an ordinary transaction: a 1994 deal between J.P. Morgan, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and ExxonMobil. In return for an insurance-style premium to...
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...1.0 Introduction Agricultural credit of late has become very scarce for smallholder farmers owing to a number of reasons. Credit institutions argue that smallholder farmers involve only themselves and are never willing to work collectively which limits the success of their business to where their skills and knowledge end. The nature of agribusiness itself leaves a lot to be desired as far as agricultural credit is concerned. Most agribusinesses have slow response to price changes, long-term production cycles, seasonality of production and are further susceptible to climate changes which culminate in cash flow problems and low long-term profitability hence posing high risk of default in payment of credit. On another note, though there are numerous credit institutions in Swaziland, loan processing is slow. Business enterprises in the country at times have to wait for months before their loans are approved (Dlamini 2001 in Ngcamphalala 2005). Although, there is an outcry of the scarcity of farm credit for smallholder farmers, other farmers do obtain funding from institutions that offer farm credit either in cash or in kind through the value chain finance instruments. Through some instruments, funds are advanced to farmers to be repaid usually in kind at harvest time yet through some instruments agricultural inputs are advanced to farmers or others in the value chain for repayment at harvest or other time with the cost of credit usually embedded into the price. Still through other...
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...January 2013 Prudential Standard APS 112 Capital Adequacy: Standardised Approach to Credit Risk Objective and key requirements of this Prudential Standard This Prudential Standard requires an authorised deposit-taking institution to hold sufficient regulatory capital against credit risk exposures. The key requirements of this Prudential Standard are that an authorised deposit-taking institution: • must apply risk-weights to on-balance sheet assets and off-balance sheet exposures for capital adequacy purposes. Risk-weights are based on credit rating grades or fixed weights broadly aligned with the likelihood of counterparty default; and • may reduce the credit risk capital requirement for on-balance sheet assets and off-balance sheet exposures where the asset or exposure is secured against eligible collateral, where the authorised deposit-taking institution has obtained direct, irrevocable and unconditional credit protection in the form of a guarantee from an eligible guarantor, mortgage insurance from an acceptable lenders mortgage insurer, a credit derivative from a protection provider or where there are eligible netting arrangements in place. APS 112 - 1 January 2013 Table of contents Authority ........................................................................................................... 3 Application ....................................................................................................... 3 Interpretation...
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...A credit default swap (CDS) is a financial swap agreement that the seller of the CDS will compensate the buyer in the event of a loan default or other credit event. The buyer of the CDS makes a series of payments (the CDS "fee" or "spread") to the seller and, in exchange, receives a payoff if the loan defaults. It was invented by Blythe Masters from JP Morgan in 1994. In the event of default the buyer of the CDS receives compensation (usually the face value of the loan), and the seller of the CDS takes possession of the defaulted loan.[1] However, anyone can purchase a CDS, even buyers who do not hold the loan instrument and who have no direct insurable interest in the loan (these are called "naked" CDSs). If there are more CDS contracts outstanding than bonds in existence, a protocol exists to hold a credit event auction; the payment received is usually substantially less than the face value of the loan.[2] Since 1 December 2011 the European Parliament has banned naked CDSs on the debt for sovereign nations.[3] Credit default swaps have existed since the early 1990s, and increased in use after 2003. By the end of 2007, the outstanding CDS amount was $62.2 trillion,[4] falling to $26.3 trillion by mid-year 2010[5] but reportedly $25.5[6] trillion in early 2012.[7] CDSs are not traded on an exchange and there is no required reporting of transactions to a government agency.[8] During the 2007-2010 financial crisis the lack of transparency in this large market became a concern...
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...in Finance Term Paper Covenant violation: How does CDS market react? Abstract We investigate the difference of loan and firm characteristics between financial covenants violated firms and normal firms; how Credit Default Swap market reacts to the first time and second time violation information and what are the determinants of violation. We find that financial covenants violated firms are more likely to be less matured, growth companies. They also borrow less money per deal than normal companies and more likely to borrow money to repay old debt rather than corporate purposes. In addition, we examine around 100 first time financial covenant violations with available CDS data from 2001 to 2012, and find credit market reacts significantly to the unfavorable first time violation information in almost all the windows. We do not find any impact on CDS spreads for the second time violations. Further, our results indicate that firm operating performance, such as leverage, profit and ROA rather than stock market performance is good measure to predict the probability of financial covenant violation. I. Introduction Almost every private loan comes with some ex ante contingencies which can be break into three subgroups: pricing grids, borrowing bases and financial covenants. A grid is used to determine the applicable interest rate of a private loan as a function of one performance measurement, for example, the credit rating of a borrower or the borrower’s leverage ratio....
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