'Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Econometrics, University of Zielona Gora'
Abstract
Since the recent financial crisis, both the Russian business community and foreign investors have started to make more and more use of ratings of the reliability of Russian banks, i.e., their ability to meet interest and repayment commitments to the investors.In response to this, the number of rating agencies has increased over the past few years.In this paper, existing ratings are analyzed and compared using ordered probit models that explain bank ratings from bank characteristics such as size indicators and financial ratios characterizing profitability, or default risk on loans given.Moreover, on the basis of a survey among financial experts, models for expert ratings are constructed and results are compared to those for the agency ratings.We find that agency and expert ratings of virtual banks are largely in line with each other, but there are also some differences.For example, liquidity measures are important for agency ratings but insignificant for the expert ratings.Moreover, we find some surprising differences between expert ratings of real banks and expert ratings of virtual banks.While overdue loans are important for the virtual banks, they play no role in either the agency ratings or the expert ratings of real banks.An explanation may be that banks manage to mask the actual number of overdue loans.
