The impact of credit rating announcements on credit default swap spreads

We document the ability of the credit default swap (CDS) market to anticipate favorable as well as unfavorable credit rating change (RC) announcements based on more extensive samples of credit rating events and CDS spreads than previous studies. We obtain four new results. In contrast to prior published studies, we find that corporate RC upgrades do have a significant impact on CDS spreads even though they are still not as well anticipated as downgrades. Second, CreditWatch (CW) and Outlook (OL) announcements, after controlling for prior credit rating events, lead to significant CARs at the time positive CW and OL credit rating events are announced. Third, we extend prior results by showing that changes in CDS spreads for non-investment-grade credits contain information useful for estimating the probability of negative credit rating events. Fourth, we find that the CDS spread impact of upgrades but not downgrades is magnified during recessions and that upgrades and downgrades also differ as to the impact of simultaneous CW/OL announcements, investment-grade/speculative-grade crossovers, current credit rating, market volatility, and industry effects.     

The delivery option in credit default swaps

Under standard assumptions the reduced-form credit risk model is not capable of accurately pricing the two fundamental credit risk instruments – bonds and credit default swaps (CDS) – simultaneously. Using a data set of euro-denominated corporate bonds and CDS our paper quantifies this mispricing by calibrating such a model to bond data, and subsequently using it to price CDS, resulting in model CDS spreads up to 50% lower on average than observed in the market. An extended model is presented which includes the delivery option implicit in CDS contracts emerging since a basket of bonds is deliverable in default. By using a constant recovery rate standard models assume equal recoveries for all bonds and hence zero value for the delivery option. Contradicting this common assumption, case studies of Chapter 11 filings presented in the paper show that corporate bonds do not necessarily trade at equal levels following default. Our extension models the implied expected recovery rate of the cheapest-to-deliver bond and, applied to data, largely eliminates the mispricing. Calibrated recovery values lie between 8% and 47% for different obligors, exhibiting strong variation among rating classes and industries. A cross-sectional analysis reveals that the implied recovery parameter depends on proxies for the delivery option, primarily the number of available bonds and bond pricing errors. No evidence is found for a direct influence of the bid-ask spread, notional amount, coupon, or rating used as proxies for bond market liquidity.     

CDOs and the financial crisis: Credit ratings and fair premia

We study risk and return characteristics of CDOs using the market standard models. We find that fair spreads on CDO tranches are much higher than fair spreads on similarly-rated corporate bonds. Our results imply that credit ratings are not sufficient for pricing, which is surprising given their central role in structured finance markets. This illustrates limitations of the rating methodologies that are solely based on real-world default probabilities or expected losses and do not capture risk premia. We also demonstrate that CDO tranches have large exposure to systematic risk and thus their ratings and prices are likely to decline substantially when credit conditions deteriorate.     

Project Finance Collateralised Debt Obligations: an Empirical Analysis of Spread Determinants

Credit rating is the most important variable in determining tranche spread at issue on collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) issues backed by project finance (PF) loans. Factors that are important for pricing in the case of corporate bonds, such as market liquidity and weighted average maturity, are also relevant for determining spreads for these securities. Furthermore, the nature of the underlying assets has a substantial impact on CDO pricing: Primary market spread is significantly higher when the underlying PF loans bear a higher level of market risk and when the proportion of projects still under construction in the securitised portfolio is larger.     

Dynamics of credit spread moments of European corporate bond indexes

Traditional quantitative credit risk models assume that changes in credit spreads are normally distributed but empirical evidence shows that they are likely to be skewed, fat-tailed, and change behaviour over time. Not taking into account such characteristics can compromise calculation of loss probabilities, pricing of credit derivatives, and profitability of trading strategies. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the dynamics of higher moments of changes in credit spreads of European corporate bond indexes using extensions of GARCH type models that allow for time-varying volatility, skewness and kurtosis of changes in credit spreads as well as a regime-switching GARCH model which allows for regime shifts in the volatility of changes in credit spreads. Performance evaluation methods are used to assess which model captures the dynamics of observed distribution of the changes in credit spreads, produces superior volatility forecasts and Value-at-Risk estimates, and yields profitable trading strategies. The results presented can have significant implications for risk management, trading activities, and pricing of credit derivatives.     

Credit default swap spreads and variance risk premia

We find that the firm-level variance risk premium has a prominent explanatory power for credit spreads in the presence of market- and firm-level control variables established in the existing literature. Such predictability complements that of the leading state variable—the leverage ratio—and strengthens significantly with a lower firm credit rating, longer credit contract maturity, and model-free implied variance. We provide further evidence that (1) the variance risk premium has a cleaner systematic component than implied variance or expected variance, (2) the cross-section of firms’ variance risk premia capture systematic variance risk in a stronger way than firms’ equity returns in capturing market return risk, and (3) a structural model with stochastic volatility can reproduce the predictability pattern of variance risk premia for credit spreads.     

Insider employee stock option trading and stock prices

The question of which factors determine corporate bonds pricing is investigated by analysing the spreads of eurobonds issued by major G-10 companies during the 1991–2001 period. Three main results emerge from the analysis. First, bond ratings appear as the most important determinant of yield spreads, with investors’ reliance on rating agencies judgments increasing over time. Second, the primary market efficiency and the expected secondary market liquidity are not relevant explanatory factors of spreads cross-sectional variability. Finally, rating agencies adopt a different, ‘through the cycle’, evaluation criteria of default risk with respect to the forward looking one adopted by bond investors.     

Theory and evidence on the dynamic interactions between sovereign credit default swaps and currency options

Using sovereign CDS spreads and currency option data for Mexico and Brazil, we document that CDS spreads covary with both the currency option implied volatility and the slope of the implied volatility curve in moneyness. We propose a joint valuation framework, in which currency return variance and sovereign default intensity follow a bivariate diffusion with contemporaneous correlation. Estimation shows that default intensity is much more persistent than currency return variance. The market price estimates on the two risk factors also explain the well-documented evidence that historical average default probabilities are lower than those implied from credit spreads.     

Looking Beyond Credit Ratings: Factors Investors Consider In Pricing European Asset‐Backed Securities

In this paper, we empirically investigate what credit factors investors rely upon when pricing the spread at issue for European asset‐backed securities. More specifically, we investigate how credit factors affect new issuance spreads after taking into account credit rating. We do so by investigating primary market spreads for tranches of non‐mortgage‐related asset‐backed securities issued from 1999 to the year prior to the subprime mortgage crisis, 2007. We find that although credit ratings play a major role in determining spreads, investors appear to not rely exclusively on these ratings. Our findings strongly suggest that investors do not ignore other credit factors beyond the assigned credit rating.     

What explains corporate sukuk primary market spreads?

This study investigates the determining factors of international corporate sukuk pricing in the primary market for the period of 2004–2015. We present novel evidence for a unique data set covering all 63 international corporate sukuk issuances consisting of both a fixed margin rating as well a credit rating score. Our cross-sectional analysis indicates that both credit rating and maturity are significant factors which reduce issue spreads, whereas sukuk margin rating increases issue spreads. More prominently, Shari’ah scholar reputation and the type of sukuk are not statistically significant factors in the explanation of the issue spread. Our results are comparable with determinants of conventional bond pricing, and our findings further confirm existing sukuk market practices.     

Expected returns, risk premia, and volatility surfaces implicit in option market prices

This article presents a pure exchange economy that extends Rubinstein (1976) to show how the jump-diffusion option pricing model of Merton (1976) is altered when jumps are correlated with diffusive risks. A non-zero correlation between jumps and diffusive risks is necessary in order to resolve the positively sloped implied volatility term structure inherent in traditional jump diffusion models. Our evidence is consistent with a negative covariance, producing a non-monotonic term structure. For the proposed market structure, we present a closed form asset pricing model that depends on the factors of the traditional jump-diffusion models, and on both the covariance of the diffusive pricing kernel with price jumps and the covariance of the jumps of the pricing kernel with the diffusive price. We present statistical evidence that these covariances are positive. For our model the expected stock return, jump and diffusive risk premiums are non-linear functions of time.     

Sarbanes-Oxley Act and corporate credit spreads

Stock market reaction suggests that despite improved disclosure and increased accountability, Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) is too costly and not beneficial. Noting that bondholders are likely to reap the many potential benefits of SOX without bearing the brunt of costs, we examine how SOX affected corporate credit spreads to better assess its benefits. SOX has led to a significant structural decline in spreads of at least 27 basis points. Riskier firms (low rating, long maturity, high leverage, and small size) and firms closely related to SOX major provisions (earning variability, managerial trading, and corporate governance) experience greater declines in spreads.     

THE DYNAMICS OF BOND YIELD SPREADS AROUND RATING REVISION DATES

We examine the effect of rating revisions on sterling Eurobond yields using a panel model with conditional heteroskedasticity that controls for event‐induced changes in the variance of spreads. Positive rating revisions are fully anticipated by the time the upgrade occurs. Negative revisions are only partially anticipated, and spreads on downgraded bonds rise for some time after the downgrade has been announced. This asymmetry is not apparent in a conventional event study model. All ratings announcements are accompanied by a temporary fall in yield volatility. We attribute this to the resolution of uncertainty about the true rating of the bond.     

Default Clustering Risks in Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities

This paper proposes an intensity-based pricing model with default dependence structure for CMBS bonds. Three features are incorporated into the proposed model. First, default is a Poisson jump process defined by a function of mortgage rating information. Second, property risks are modeled using a high dimensional Brownian motion process that captures both systematic risk and idiosyncratic risk in property value. Third, default dependence structure is built into the extended model. Based on a set of input parameters, we simulate various pricing effects on a hypothetical CMBS using the proposed model structure. The results of the base-line intensity model show that yield spreads on CMBS bonds increase in the recovery rate, but decreases in the hazard rate. Security structured with smaller subordination tranche exposes CMBS bonds to higher default risks. The model predicts that default clustering increases required yield spreads of CMBS bonds. At a 70% recovery rate and a 3% default hazard rate, yield spreads of Junior bonds are expected to increase by 169 basis points when counterparty risks increase by 50%. The results highlight the importance of clustering risks associated with counterparty default when valuing CMBS bonds.     

A reduced form model of default spreads with Markov-switching macroeconomic factors

We examine the ability of observed macroeconomic factors and the possibility of changes in regime to explain the proportion of yield spreads caused by the risk of default in the context of a reduced form model. For this purpose, we extend the Markov-switching risk-free term structure model of Bansal and Zhou (2002) to the corporate bond setting and develop recursive formulas for default probabilities, risk-free and risky zero-coupon bond yields as well as credit default swap premia. The model is calibrated with consumption, inflation, risk-free yields and default data for Aa, A and Baa bonds from the 1987 to 2008 period. We find that our macroeconomic factors are linked with two out of three sharp increases in the spreads during this sample period, indicating that the spread variations can be related to macroeconomic undiversifiable risk.     

What Drives the Cross‐Section of Credit Spreads?: A Variance Decomposition Approach

I decompose the variation of credit spreads for corporate bonds into changing expected returns and changing expectation of credit losses. Using a log‐linearized pricing identity and a vector autoregression applied to microlevel data from 1973 to 2011, I find that expected returns contribute to the cross‐sectional variance of credit spreads nearly as much as expected credit loss does. However, most of the time‐series variation in credit spreads for the market portfolio corresponds to risk premiums.     

An Intertemporal International Asset Pricing Model: Theory and Empirical Evidence

We extend Campbell's (1993) model to develop an intertemporal international asset pricing model (IAPM). We show that the expected international asset return is determined by a weighted average of market risk, market hedging risk, exchange rate risk and exchange rate hedging risk. These weights sum up to one. Our model explicitly separates hedging against changes in the investment opportunity set from hedging against exchange rate changes as well as exchange rate risk from intertemporal hedging risk. A test of the conditional version of our intertemporal IAPM using a multivariate GARCH process supports the asset pricing model. We find that the exchange rate risk is important for pricing international equity returns and it is much more important than intertemporal hedging risk.     

Financial statement comparability and credit risk

Prior research shows that firms’ financial statement comparability improves the accuracy of market participants’ valuation judgments and thus may reduce firms’ costs of capital. Distinct from prior research focusing on the equity market, we develop measures of comparability relevant to debt market participants based on the within-industry variability of Moody’s adjustments to reported accounting numbers for the purposes of credit rating. We examine two sets of adjustments: (1) to the interest coverage ratio and (2) to non-recurring income items. We validate these comparability measures by providing evidence that greater comparability is associated with lower frequency and magnitude of split ratings by credit rating agencies. We predict and find that greater comparability is associated with (1) lower estimated bid-ask spreads for traded bonds, (2) lower credit spreads for both bonds and five-year credit default swaps, and (3) a steeper one- to five-year credit default swap term structure. Our results are consistent with financial statement comparability reducing debt market participants’ uncertainty about and pricing of firms’ credit risk.     

The term structure of interbank risk

We infer a term structure of interbank risk from spreads between rates on interest rate swaps indexed to the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and overnight indexed swaps. We develop a tractable model of interbank risk to decompose the term structure into default and non-default (liquidity) components. From August 2007 to January 2011, the fraction of total interbank risk due to default risk, on average, increases with maturity. At short maturities, the non-default component is important in the first half of the sample period and is correlated with measures of funding and market liquidity. The model also provides a framework for pricing, hedging, and risk management of interest rate swaps in the presence of significant basis risk.     

Regime dependent determinants of credit default swap spreads

Credit default swap (CDS) spreads display pronounced regime specific behaviour. A Markov switching model of the determinants of changes in the iTraxx Europe indices demonstrates that they are extremely sensitive to stock volatility during periods of CDS market turbulence. But in ordinary market circumstances CDS spreads are more sensitive to stock returns than they are to stock volatility. Equity hedge ratios are three or four times larger during the turbulent period, which explains why previous research on single-regime models finds stock positions to be ineffective hedges for default swaps. Interest rate movements do not affect the financial sector iTraxx indices and they only have a significant effect on the other indices when the spreads are not excessively volatile. Raising interest rates may decrease the probability of credit spreads entering a volatile period.