The insolvent state: analyzing organized procedures for restructuring the bankrupt sovereign

The purpose of this Article is to examine the impetus behind the movement for a sovereign bankruptcy procedure. The intention is to look at what has (and has not) been said on this issue and evaluate the soundness of various proposals. Part II of this Article looks at the background of international debt crises and the underlying discussions that have taken place on this issue in the international arena. Part III looks at more recent thinking on the subject, sheds light on Argentina's catastrophic global debt crises, and discusses the statutory and market‐oriented solutions for sovereign debt crises. Part IV concludes that the way forward, for now, is to include majority action provision in bond contracts while encouraging responsible internal governance for sovereigns. Such an approach is beneficial until the international market revisits an overarching proposal. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Domestic Banks As Lightning Rods? Home Bias and Information during the Eurozone Crisis

European banks have been criticized for holding excessive domestic government debt during the recent Eurozone crisis, which may have intensified the diabolic loop between sovereign and bank credit risks. By using a novel bank-level data set covering the entire timeline of the Eurozone crisis, I first reconfirm that the crisis led to the reallocation of sovereign debt from foreign to domestic banks. In contrast to the recent literature focusing only on sovereign debt, I show that the banks' private-sector exposures were (at least) equally affected by the rise in home bias. Consistent with this pattern, I propose a new debt reallocation channel based on informational frictions and show that the informationally closer foreign banks increase their relative exposures when the sovereign risk rises. The effect of informational closeness is economically meaningful and robust to the use of different information measures and controls for alternative channels of sovereign debt reallocation.     

中国民营上市公司债务融资破产威胁功效的实证研究

以2002～2007年陷入财务危机的民营上市公司（ST公司）为研究样本．通过相关分析实证检验了中国债务融资的破产威胁功效.研究发现,中国民营上市公司债务融资总体上对财务状况恶劣的公司起到了债务治理作用,发挥了破产威胁功效。短期债务能够对陷入财务危机的民营上市公司起到改善业绩的作用,较好地发挥破产威胁功效,而长期债务未能发挥破产威胁作用。银行贷款能够促进陷入财务困境的民营上市公司改善业绩,发挥破产威胁功效,而商业信用却没能发挥破产威胁功效。     

当前国际政府债务问题的影响与警示

为应对席卷全球的国际金融危机,各国政府纷纷采取经济刺激措施,代替民间企业和金融机构承担危机成本,这不可避免带来一定的政府债务问题。随着时间的推移,部分政府债务问题逐步凸显,成为全球经济走出危机阴影的障碍。文章分析认为,当前国际上政府债务问题呈现脆弱性、复杂性、集中性和长期性特征,成为全球经济复苏的绊脚石,甚至会给世界各国经济带来灾难性影响。文章同时总结了国际政府债务问题带给我国的启示。     

Banks and sovereign risk: A granular view

We investigate the determinants of sovereign bond holdings of German banks and the implications of such holdings for bank risk. We use granular information on all German banks and all sovereign debt exposures in the years 2005–2013. As regards the determinants of sovereign bond holdings of banks, we find that these are larger for weakly capitalized banks, banks that are active on capital markets, and for large banks. Yet, only around two thirds of all German banks hold sovereign bonds. Macroeconomic fundamentals were significant drivers of sovereign bond holdings only after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. With the outbreak of the sovereign debt crisis, German banks reallocated their portfolios toward sovereigns with lower debt ratios and bonds with lower yields. With regard to the implications for bank risk, we find that low-risk government bonds decreased the risk of German banks, especially for savings and cooperative banks. Holdings of high-risk government bonds, in turn, increased the risk of commercial banks during the sovereign debt crisis.     

主权信用违约互换的运作及启示

欧洲各国主权债务危机的频发,使得主权CDS在全球范围内备受瞩目。本文分析了主权CDS的市场发展状况、运作及定价机制;考察欧洲主权债务危机中主权CDS的行为;提出对我国地方政府债务问题的启示。研究发现:(1)主权CDS息差变化受到了欧元区因素、本国因素、投机和代理对冲的影响;(2)短期主权CDS供不应求;(3)禁止主权CDS的裸卖空交易存在不合理性;(4)西欧主权风险外溢使得东欧及新兴市场国家的主权CDS市场波动加剧。     

Vine copulas and applications to the European Union sovereign debt analysis

European sovereign debt crisis has become a very popular topic since late 2009. In this paper, sovereign debt crisis is investigated by calculating the probabilities of the potential future crisis of 11 countries in the European Union. We use sovereign spreads of the European countries against Germany as targets and apply the GARCH based vine copula simulation technique. The methodology solves the difficulties of calculating the probabilities of rarely happening events and takes sovereign debt movement dependence, especially tail dependence, into consideration. Results indicate that Italy and Spain are the most likely next victims of the sovereign debt crisis, followed by Ireland, France and Belgium. The UK, Sweden and Denmark, which are outside the euro area, are the most financially stable countries in the sample.     

希腊主权债务危机的成因与影响

日益严重的希腊主权债务危机将希腊推向了欧元区主权债务问题的风口浪尖,由此也形成了影响欧元区稳定运行的严峻挑战。该文基于国际金融危机对希腊经济与财政运行状况的影响,分析了引起希腊主权债务危机的成因及解决途径,指出解决希腊主权债务危机除了希腊自身的努力外,依然需要国际社会尤其是欧盟的援助。从全球的角度看,其他经济体的主权债务问题也同样值得警惕和重视。     

Sovereign Debt Crises in Latin America: A Market Pressure Approach

ABSTRACT

We construct a continuous sovereign debt crisis index for four large Latin American countries for the period 1870?2012. To obtain the optimal set of indicators and the optimal value of the threshold for dating crises we apply the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Our sovereign debt crisis index is a weighted average of three indicators: the debt-to-GDP ratio, the external interest rate spread, and the exports-to-imports ratio. The continuous index allows a more advanced analysis of sovereign debt crises as illustrated with an investigation of the relationship between sovereign debt crises and business cycles in Latin America.     

Enhanced Debt Management: Solving the eurozone crisis by linking debt management with fiscal and monetary policy

Unconventional approaches to suit unusual circumstances have become acceptable in monetary policy, a formerly highly conservative discipline. In this paper it is argued that unconventional approaches should also be considered in sovereign debt management, in order to contribute to resolving the eurozone sovereign debt crisis. First, the Troika crisis lending to indebted sovereign borrowers in the eurozone is reviewed and compared with standard IMF post-crisis lending. The main difference and shortcoming is the unsustainable character of the eurozone approach, due to the omission of demand stimulation components. To address this and other shortcomings, the features of an ideal alternative funding tool are identified. It would solve the funding problems of affected sovereigns, help stabilise the banking system, but most of all stimulate domestic demand and hence end the vicious downward spiral. It is found that this funding method can be implemented as part of enhanced public debt management by each nation's debt management office.     

Governance and bank characteristics in the credit and sovereign debt crises – the impact of CEO power

The global financial sector recently suffered from two interrelated crises: the credit crisis and the sovereign debt crisis. A common question is whether the recent experience with the credit crisis has helped in dealing with the sovereign debt crisis. We study more specifically whether banks with powerful CEOs perform better or worse than other banks, and if there is any difference in this relationship between the two crises. Using unique hand-collected data for 378 large global banks, we find that CEO power has a significant positive relation to bank profitability and asset quality, but also to insolvency risk, during the sovereign debt crisis. Thus, strong CEOs do not appear to be detrimental to bank performance. Our results also support the idea that deposit insurance may have contributed to the credit crisis.     

主权CDS对欧元区主权债务危机的影响

本文概括了主权CDS是否影响欧元区主权债务危机的几种观点和研究,发现了其中的不足之处,并试图进行弥补。文章基于面板数据,在对样本区间和国家进行分组的基础上,用向量误差修正模型(VECM)检验了主权CDS息差与国债息差的价格发现过程,此外还用向量自回归(VAR)模型分析了各国主权CDS息差之间的传染效应。结果发现,虽然主权CDS在价格发现过程中占据领先地位,但是没有证据表明主权CDS与主权债务危机之间存在必然的联系,而各国债务危机之间确实存在传染效应。     

Insurance companies’ trading behaviour during the European sovereign debt crisis: Flight home or flight to quality?

This paper empirically investigates if insurers exhibited a flight home or flight to quality during the European sovereign debt crisis and other stages of the financial crisis. Our dataset consists of over sixty insurance companies, for which we separately observe trading behaviour and portfolio revaluations at a quarterly frequency during 2006–2013. When explaining insurers’ trading behaviour we explicitly control for country risk and momentum strategies. The results show that insurers exhibited a flight to quality during the European sovereign debt crisis, while we find no evidence of a flight home. The flight to quality was not present before the European sovereign debt crisis and disappeared after ECB chairman Draghi's speech mid-2012. Interestingly, supervisory data suggests that the observed flight to quality was not driven by regulatory solvency constraints.     

欧洲主权债务危机的根源与出路

欧洲主权债务危机是主权问题与银行问题相互作用的结果,其根源在于欧洲银行体系和政治结构的特殊性。要化解主权债务危机需要实现财政政策的一体化和银行监管的一体化,同时进一步推动欧盟和欧元区改革。     

Coming Through in a Crisis: How Chapter 11 and the Debt Restructuring Industry Are Helping to Revive the U.S. Economy

During the recent financial crisis, U.S. bankruptcy courts and debt restructuring practitioners were faced with the largest wave of corporate defaults and bankruptcies in history. In 2008 and 2009, $1.8 trillion worth of public company assets entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection—almost 20 times the amount during the prior two years. And the portfolio companies of U.S. private equity firms faced a towering wall of debt that, many observers predicted, was about to wipe out most of the industry. But far from the death of private equity or a severe contraction of corporate America, the past three years have seen an astonishingly rapid working off of U.S. corporate debt overhang, allowing corporate profits and values to rebound with remarkable speed and vigor. And as the author of this article argues, corporate America's recovery from the recent financial crisis provides a clear demonstration of the importance of U.S. bankruptcy laws and restructuring practices in maintaining the competitiveness of U.S. companies and the long‐run growth of the U.S. economy.     

Sovereign debt and reserves with liquidity and productivity crises

During the recent financial crisis, emerging economies have kept accumulating both sovereign reserves and debt. To account for this empirical fact, we model the optimal portfolio choice of a sovereign that is subject to liquidity and productivity shocks. We determine the equilibrium level of debt and its cost by solving a contracting game between sovereign and international lenders. Although raising debt increases the sovereign exposure to liquidity and productivity crises, the simultaneous accumulation of reserves can mitigate the negative effects of such crises. This mechanism rationalizes the complementarity between debt and reserves.     

A comprehensive approach to measuring the relation between systemic risk exposure and sovereign debt

Using an integrated model to control for simultaneity, as well as new risk measurement techniques such as Adapted Exposure CoVaR and Marginal Expected Shortfall (MES), we show that the aggregate systemic risk exposure of financial institutions is positively related to sovereign debt yields in European countries in an episodic manner, varying positively with the intensity of the financial crisis facing a particular nation. We find evidence of a simultaneous relation between systemic risk exposure and sovereign debt yields. This suggests that models of sovereign debt yields should also include the systemic risk of a country's financial system in order to avoid potentially important mis-specification errors. We find evidence that systemic risk of a country's financial institutions and the risk of sovereign governments are inter-related and shocks to these domestic linkages are stronger and longer lasting than international risk spillovers. Thus, the channel in which domestic sovereign debt yields can be affected by another nation's sovereign debt is mostly an indirect one in that shocks to a foreign country's government finances are transmitted to that country's financial system which, in turn, can spill over to the domestic financial system and, ultimately, have a destabilizing effect on the domestic sovereign debt market.     

曼氏金融破产警示及借鉴意义

美国曼氏金融公司是美国首家因欧债危机影响而破产的金融机构,其破产不仅极大地震动了美国金融界,更重要的是给世界金融的未来发展留下了思考和启示。本文对曼氏金融破产始末进行梳理,分析导致其破产的各种原因,总结出曼氏金融破产的重要启示,这对于防范欧债危机风险、加强和改善金融监管具有重要意义。     

An Empirical Study of International Spillover of Sovereign Risk to Bank Credit Risk

The severity and complexity of the recent financial crisis has motivated the need for understanding the relationships between sovereign ratings and bank credit ratings. This is the first study to examine the impact of the “international” spillover of sovereign risk to bank credit risk through both a ratings channel and an asset holdings channel. In the first case, the downgrade of sovereign ratings in GIIPS (Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain) countries leads to rating downgrades of banks in the peripheral countries. The second channel indicates that larger asset holdings of GIIPS debt increases the credit risk of cross‐border banks, and hence, the probabilities of downgrade.