Integrating industrial and financial analysis into a rating methodology for corporate risk detection: the case of the Vicenza manufacturing firms.

Banks weakness derived from rating models that produce cyclical effects on credit availability and are not able to anticipate anti-cyclical firms’ trends. The aim of the paper is to develop a framework for an original rating methodology derived from integration of industrial and financial analysis able to identify best performers in crisis scenarios (anti-cyclically). Industrial analysis is based on firm heterogeneity approaches to measure three dimensions of analysis: innovation, internationalization and growth. Financial analysis focuses on operational return and risks measures and develops an integrated classification of firms using standardized XBRL financial data. Further integration of the two methodologies is used to create the effective set of information needed for rating system

Interdependencies between Leverage and Capital Ratios in the Banking Sector of the Czech Republic

In this paper we discuss the implications of the Basel III requirements on the leverage ratio for the banking sector in the Czech Republic. We identify the potential binding constraints from regulatory limits and analyze the interactions among leverage and capital ratios over the country’s economic cycle (during the period 2007-2014). The historical data confirm stronger capital ratios of the banks and an overall solid leverage level with only 5% of the total historical observations being lower than the regulatory recommendations. By analyzing the components of ratios, we conclude that the banks are focusing more on the optimization of risk weighted assets. Strong co-movement patterns between leverage and assets point to the active management of leverage as a means of expanding and contracting the size of balance sheets and maximizing the utility of the capital. The analysis of correlation patterns among the variables indicates that the total assets (and exposure) in contrast to Tier 1 capital are the main contributors to the cyclical movements in the leverage. The leverage and the total assets also demonstrate a weak correlation with GDP, but a strong co-movement with loans to the private sector

Unwilling Subjects of Financialization

This paper seeks to advance debates about the financialization of housing by focusing on the emergence of rental housing as a frontier for financialization, a dynamic that is increasingly relevant since the global financial crisis. Situated in New York City, the research focuses on an aggressive wave of investment in affordable, rent-stabilized properties by private equity firms, their efforts to release value from these properties, and the implications of the 2008 financial crisis for their investment strategies and thus for tenants’ experience of home. Through detailed empirical analysis tracing the connections between how rental housing has been constituted as a new site for private equity investment globally, the local conditions facilitating this process in New York, and how it reshaped everyday life for tenants, the article theorizes tenants as unwilling subjects of financialization. Yet unwillingness does not necessarily translate to being overtaken; it also connotes reluctance, and indeed struggle. This novel conceptualization highlights the ways in which financialization meets with dissent, and its necessarily contingent and incomplete nature. The paper therefore moves forward the wider intellectual project of understanding financialization not as a monolithic and inevitable process, but as one characterized by resistance from without and contradiction from within