Towards a Theory of the Credit-Risk Balance Sheet (II). The Evolution of its Structure

This article has an immediate predecessor, upon which it is based and with which readers must necessarily be familiar: Towards a Theory of the Credit-Risk Balance Sheet (Vallverdu, Somoza and Moya, 2006). The Balance Sheet is conceptualised on the basis of the duality of a credit-based transaction; it deals with its theoretical foundations, providing evidence of a causal credit-risk duality, that is, a true causal relationship; its characteristics, properties and its static and dynamic characteristics are analyzed. This article, which provides a logical continuation to the previous one, studies the evolution of the structure of the Credit-Risk Balance Sheet as a consequence of a businesss dynamics in the credit area. Given the Credit-Risk Balance Sheet of a company at any given time, it attempts to estimate, by means of sequential analysis, its structural evolution, showing its usefulness in the management and control of credit and risk. To do this, it bases itself, with the necessary adaptations, on the by-now classic works of Palomba and Cutolo. The establishment of the corresponding transformation matrices allows one to move from an initial balance sheet structure to a final, future one, to understand its credit-risk situation trends, as well as to make possible its monitoring and control, basic elements in providing support for risk management.credit-risk balance sheet, bad debts, risk, insolvency, commercial credit, transformation matrix, probabilities matrix, credit information, business risk, credit risk, credit management

Towards a Theory of the Credit-Risk Balance Sheet

This article designs what it calls a Credit-Risk Balance Sheet (the risk being that of default by customers), a tool which, in principle, can contribute to revealing, controlling and managing the bad debt risk arising from a companys commercial credit, whose amount can represent a significant proportion of both its current and total assets. To construct it, we start from the duality observed in any credit transaction of this nature, whose basic identity can be summed up as Credit = Risk. Credit is granted by a company to its customer, and can be ranked by quality (we suggest the credit scoring system) and risk can either be assumed (interiorised) by the company itself or transferred to third parties (exteriorised). What provides the approach that leads to us being able to talk with confidence of a real Credit-Risk Balance Sheet with its methodological robustness is that the dual vision of the credit transaction is not, as we demonstrate, merely a classificatory duality (a double risk-credit classification of reality) but rather a true causal relationship, that is, a risk-credit causal duality. Once said Credit-Risk Balance Sheet (which bears a certain structural similarity with the classic net asset balance sheet) has been built, and its methodological coherence demonstrated, its properties static and dynamic are studied. Analysis of the temporal evolution of the Credit-Risk Balance Sheet and of its applications will be the object of subsequent works.credit-risk balance sheet, bad debts, risk, insolvency, commercial credit, credit, credit information, business risk, credit risk, credit management

Una comparacion de la seleccion de los ratios contables en los modelos contable-financieros de prediccion de la insolvencia empresarial

During the last 30 years the growing appearance of quantitative models about insolvency prediction in the financial and accounting literature has awakened a great interest among the specialists and researchers of this field. What in the beginning were a few models with a sole objective, has evolved into a source of constant research. In this paper an insolvency prediction model is formulated through a combination of different quantitative variables extracted from the Annual Accounts of sample firms for the period 1994-1997. Using a stepwise procedure, those variables, which proved to be the most relevant in providing information were selected and analysed. Once we have formulated these models, we looked for an alternative to the previous variables through the use of factorial analysis of main components and it is made a variable selection through this technique. The univariate analysis is applied to both groups of ratios. Lastly, we compared the models obtained and we concluded that although the ratios of previous literature offer better results, the models with the variables of factorial analysis should not be rejected because the causes of insolvency are clearer than in those models that used variables from popularity in literature.suspensions of payments, logistic regression, insolvency, predictions, factorial analysis, ratios, bankruptcy

Els Factors Competitius de les Pimes a Catalunya

The aim of this study is to reflect which the main competitive factors for small and medium businesses are today in Catalonia. For this reason, it has been chosen a sample of 1000 small businesses approximately (according the EU criteria) and analysed the financial information. From this source, it is possible to argue that all aspects related to personnel show the ratios with more statistical significance in order to explain profitability. Also, it has been sent a questionnaire to the firms of the sample and asked the managerial point of view about their opinion about different issues related with competitiveness. Only 50 firms responded our requirement and human resources revealed to be the most important one. We expected that other factors such as innovation or investment in technology were among the most relevant. Nevertheless the results were definitive in the sense that no other aspect was as relevant as the mentioned.small businesses, financial analysis, competitive factors