Funding liquidity risk and fund transfer pricing in banking

Funding liquidity risk was one of the main reasons for bank failure during the global financial crisis in 2007-2008. New legislation has been released in the form of Basel III, in particular the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) and the Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR), to strengthen the liquidity requirements for banks; this makes funding liquidity a very important topic for banks. In this thesis, I will study the important factors that need to be taken into consideration when dealing with liquidity risk and how a bank can manage their funding liquidity risk. A key concept used in banks is Fund Transfer Pricing (FTP). This approach helps the banks to manage their interest rate risk. I will investigate how funding liquidity risk can be incorporated into this framework. It is important that this approach will still maximise the bank's overall profits. In order to achieve this I will initially evaluate a one time period model. This shows whether the bank's overall profits can be optimised using FTP. My results show that it is possible to allow each business unit to work independently and that, by using FTP, individual business units can be optimised consistently with the bank's overall profits. However, for this to occur, it is important to decide whether a bank is deposit rich or deposit poor as an incorrect assumption will lead to sub-optimal profits for the bank. Banks work in more than 1 time period; therefore, I will assess how the model can be extended and how FTP would work over multiple time periods. One major consideration is to account for the uncertainty regarding the timing of cash flows. This is because customers often have the option to prepay loans or withdraw their deposits. I will investigate an approach for calculating the cost of these options and how this can be included in the FTP framework. By applying a cost to the uncertainty, we can insure that the business units are incentivised in the correct way while still maximising the profits of the bank. Under my approach the treasury unit will be exposed to actual events in return for receiving a fair value for the cost of the option. The business units will be charged the cost of the option. There is potential for one party to act in their own interest by changing the value of the option. However, as both parties need to agree, this risk should be removed over time. I have shown how this can be done over 2 time periods but further research is needed to investigate over more time periods

Design and feasibility testing of a novel group intervention for young women who binge drink in groups

BackgroundYoung women frequently drink alcohol in groups and binge drinking within these natural drinking groups is common. This study describes the design of a theoretically and empirically based group intervention to reduce binge drinking among young women. It also evaluates their engagement with the intervention and the acceptability of the study methods.MethodsFriendship groups of women aged 18–35 years, who had two or more episodes of binge drinking (>6 UK units on one occasion; 48g of alcohol) in the previous 30 days, were recruited from the community. A face-to-face group intervention, based on the Health Action Process Approach, was delivered over three sessions. Components of the intervention were woven around fun activities, such as making alcohol free cocktails. Women were followed up four months after the intervention was delivered. Results The target of 24 groups (comprising 97 women) was recruited. The common pattern of drinking was infrequent, heavy drinking (mean consumption on the heaviest drinking day was UK 18.1 units). Process evaluation revealed that the intervention was delivered with high fidelity and acceptability of the study methods was high. The women engaged positively with intervention components and made group decisions about cutting down. Twenty two groups set goals to reduce their drinking, and these were translated into action plans. Retention of individuals at follow up was 87%.ConclusionsThis study successfully recruited groups of young women whose patterns of drinking place them at high risk of acute harm. This novel approach to delivering an alcohol intervention has potential to reduce binge drinking among young women. The high levels of engagement with key steps in the behavior change process suggests that the group intervention should be tested in a full randomised controlled trial

Uganda Genome Resource Enables Insights into Population History and Genomic Discovery in Africa.

Genomic studies in African populations provide unique opportunities to understand disease etiology, human diversity, and population history. In the largest study of its kind, comprising genome-wide data from 6,400 individuals and whole-genome sequences from 1,978 individuals from rural Uganda, we find evidence of geographically correlated fine-scale population substructure. Historically, the ancestry of modern Ugandans was best represented by a mixture of ancient East African pastoralists. We demonstrate the value of the largest sequence panel from Africa to date as an imputation resource. Examining 34 cardiometabolic traits, we show systematic differences in trait heritability between European and African populations, probably reflecting the differential impact of genes and environment. In a multi-trait pan-African GWAS of up to 14,126 individuals, we identify novel loci associated with anthropometric, hematological, lipid, and glycemic traits. We find that several functionally important signals are driven by Africa-specific variants, highlighting the value of studying diverse populations across the region.Main funding: This work was funded by the Wellcome Trust, The Wellcome Sanger Institute (WT098051), the U.K. Medical Research Council (G0901213-92157, G0801566, and MR/K013491/1), and the Medical Research Council/Uganda Virus Research Institute Uganda Research Unit on AIDS core funding

Creep and low strength of spider dragline subjected to constant loads

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