In finance, default is failure to meet the legal obligations of a loan, for example when a home buyer fails to make a mortgage payment, or when a corporation or government fails to pay a bond which has reached maturity. A national or sovereign default is the failure or refusal of a government to repay its national debt.
A credit risk is risk of default on a debt that may arise from a borrower failing to make required payments. In the first resort, the risk is that of the lender and includes lost principal and interest, disruption to cash flows, and increased collection costs. The loss may be complete or partial. In an efficient market, higher levels of credit risk will be associated with higher borrowing costs. Because of this, measures of borrowing costs such as yield spreads can be used to infer credit risk levels based on assessments by market participants.
Distressed securities are securities over companies or government entities that are experiencing financial or operational distress, default, or are under bankruptcy. As far as debt securities, this is called distressed debt. Purchasing or holding such distressed-debt creates significant risk due to the possibility that bankruptcy may render such securities worthless.
Financial distress is a term in corporate finance used to indicate a condition when promises to creditors of a company are broken or honored with difficulty. If financial distress cannot be relieved, it can lead to bankruptcy. Financial distress is usually associated with some costs to the company; these are known as costs of financial distress.
Aswath Damodaran, is a Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University, where he teaches corporate finance and equity valuation.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to finance:
Within the theory of corporate finance, bankruptcy costs of debt are the increased costs of financing with debt instead of equity that result from a higher probability of bankruptcy. The fact that bankruptcy is generally a costly process in itself and not only a transfer of ownership implies that these costs negatively affect the total value of the firm. These costs can be thought of as a financial cost, in the sense that the cost of financing increases because the probability of bankruptcy increases. One way to understand this is to realize that when a firm goes bankrupt investors holding its debt are likely to lose part or all of their investment, and therefore investors require a higher rate of return when investing in bonds of a firm that can easily go bankrupt. This implies that an increase in debt which ends up increasing a firm's bankruptcy probability causes an increase in these bankruptcy costs of debt.
Marti G. Subrahmanyam is the Charles E. Merrill Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University. He also teaches for the Master of Science in Global Finance (MSGF), which is a joint program between Stern and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Professor Subrahmanyam is best known for his research in the areas of corporate finance, capital markets and international finance.
Debtor-in-possession financing or DIP financing is a special form of financing provided for companies in financial distress, typically during restructuring under corporate bankruptcy law. Usually, this debt is considered senior to all other debt, equity, and any other securities issued by a company — violating any absolute priority rule by placing the new financing ahead of a company's existing debts for payment.
The Z-score formula for predicting bankruptcy was published in 1968 by Edward I. Altman, who was, at the time, an Assistant Professor of Finance at New York University. The formula may be used to predict the probability that a firm will go into bankruptcy within two years. Z-scores are used to predict corporate defaults and an easy-to-calculate control measure for the financial distress status of companies in academic studies. The Z-score uses multiple corporate income and balance sheet values to measure the financial health of a company.
Bankruptcy prediction is the art of predicting bankruptcy and various measures of financial distress of public firms. It is a vast area of finance and accounting research. The importance of the area is due in part to the relevance for creditors and investors in evaluating the likelihood that a firm may go bankrupt.
Ingo Walter is a professor of finance, corporate governance and ethics as well as Vice Dean of Faculty at New York University's Stern School of Business.
Kenneth C. Froewiss was a Clinical Professor of Finance at the New York University Stern School of Business, and specialized investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance. Professor Froewiss also taught for the TRIUM Global Executive MBA Program, an alliance of NYU Stern, the London School of Economics and HEC School of Management, and served as Academic Director of Executive Programs at NYU Stern.
Richard Eugene Sylla is the chairman of the board of trustees of the Museum of American Finance.
TRIUM Global Executive MBA program is an alliance between NYU Stern School of Business, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and HEC School of Management, Paris. TRIUM is ranked at #2 in the world in the 2018 Financial Times EMBA rankings and #1 in the 2014 edition.
Anthony Saunders is the John M. Schiff Professor of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business and is currently on the Executive Committee of the Salomon Center of the Study of Financial Institutions. He teaches "Market and Liquidity Risk" in the Risk Management Open Enrollment program for Stern Executive EducationArchived 2010-08-10 at the Wayback Machine. Saunders also teaches for both the Master of Science in Global Finance (MSGF) and Master of Science in Risk Management Program for Executives (MSRM). MSGF is jointly offered by NYU Stern and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. MSRM is offered by NYU Stern, in partnership with the Amsterdam Institute of Finance.
Jennifer N. Carpenter is an American finance academic best known for her pioneering research into executive stock options. Other interests include fund manager compensation, survivorship bias, corporate bonds, and option pricing. She has been published in numerous journals including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Business.
A period of financial distress occurs when the price of a company or an asset or an index of a set of assets in a market is declining with the danger of a sudden crash of value occurring, either because the company is experiencing increasing problems of cash flow or a deteriorating credit balance or because the price had become too high as a result of a speculative bubble that has now peaked.
New York University (NYU) Stern Global Programs offer three advanced degree programs in partnership with international schools.
Paulson & Co. Inc. is an American investment management firm, established by its president and portfolio manager, John Paulson in 1994. Specializing in "global merger, event arbitrage and credit strategies", the firm had a relatively low profile on Wall Street until its hugely successful bet against the subprime mortgage market in 2007.
