Business Commons^™

Financial Indicators Of Bankruptcy Risk In Local Government Entities, Beth Parker Seymore

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The efficiency and stability of a local government can impact the lifestyle of its citizens. While Chapter 9 bankruptcies are not common, when they do occur, they can be disruptive and extremely costly. Scholarly literature on bankruptcy prediction focuses primarily on corporate bankruptcies. Therefore, a gap exists regarding predictors specific to municipal bankruptcies. This non-experimental quantitative study examined the relationship between the financial indicators of those government entities that have declared bankruptcy as compared to financial indicators from similar government entities that have not declared bankruptcy in order to identify possible predictors of bankruptcy. The analysis established that two financial …

The Rescue Of The Us Auto Industry, Module Z:Overview, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Greg Feldberg, Alexander Nye, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

In the fall of 2008, credit markets tightened amid a broader economic downturn that severely impacted the US auto industry, especially the three largest domestic manufacturers, General Motors (GM), Ford Motors, and Chrysler. The companies requested assistance from the government in a bid to stay afloat, but Congress declined to authorize funding. The Bush administration, however, provided bridge loans to GM and Chrysler under the Auto Industry Finance Program (AIFP), funded through the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), to sustain them until the Obama administration was in place. Within months, the Obama administration decided that a speedy bankruptcy would be …

The Rescue Of The Us Auto Industry, Module B: Restructuring General Motors Through Bankruptcy, Kaleb B. Nygaard

Journal of Financial Crises

As the Global Financial Crisis worsened in 2008, credit markets tightened and a broader economic downturn developed, hitting the auto industry particularly hard. The crisis intensified a decade-long decline of the largest US auto manufacturers. Because of its size and importance to the economy, the US government decided to provide assistance to General Motors (GM) to sustain it while it developed plans for its long-term viability. Congress declined to authorize funding for the auto manufacturers, but in December 2008, Treasury provided a bridge loan to GM under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to sustain the company until the Obama …

Pandemic Hope For Chapter 11 Financing, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

One of the biggest surprises of the recent pandemic from a bankruptcy perspective has been the ready availability of financing. A variety of factors—such as an estimated $2.5 trillion in available funding at the outset of the crisis and the buoyant stock market—may have contributed. In this Essay, I focus on a less widely appreciated factor, a striking shift in the capital structure of many corporate debtors. Rather than borrowing from one group of lenders, debtors now often borrow from multiple groups of diverse lenders. Although the new capital structure complexity has downsides, it also could counteract a longstanding problem …

Firm Survival Of Listed Nigerian Financial Institutions: A Consolidated Methods Approach, Sunusi Garba, Adamu M. Abubakar, Ahmad I. Mohammed, Mohammed S. Damamisau

Bullion

The firm's survival is regarded as an essential element usually used by the capital market participants in making vital decisions. This study examines the combined roles of bankruptcy, earnings management, and profitability in explaining a firm's survival in the listed Nigerian financial institutions. To achieve this, a descriptive research design is adopted and data were generated from databases of the listed companies in the Nigerian Stock Exchange for the period 2006 to 2015. Panel data analysis was employed in analysing collected data of the sampled 29 financial institutions in the Nigerian financial sector. The study found that most of the …

The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy C: Managing The Balance Sheet Through The Use Of Repo 105, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

The Lehman Brothers court-appointed bankruptcy examiner produced a 2,200-page report detailing possible claims that the estate might pursue. The most surprising revelation of the report was that during its last year Lehman had relied heavily on an unusual financing transaction—Repo 105. The examiner concluded that Lehman’s aggressive use of Repo 105 transactions enabled it to remove up to $50 billion of assets from its balance sheet at quarter-end and to manipulate its leverage ratio so that it could report more favorable results. This case considers in-depth Lehman’s questionable use of Repo 105 transactions and its impact.

Venezuela Undermines Gold Miner Crystallex's Attempts To Recover On Its Icsid Award, Sam Wesson

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Empty Idea Of “Equality Of Creditors”, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

For two hundred years, the equality of creditors norm—the idea that similarly situated creditors should be treated similarly—has been widely viewed as the most important principle in American bankruptcy law, rivaled only by our commitment to a fresh start for honest but unfortunate debtors. I argue in this Article that the accolades are misplaced. Although the equality norm once was a rough proxy for legitimate concerns, such as curbing self-dealing, it no longer plays this role. Nor does it serve any other beneficial purpose.

Part I of this Article traces the historical emergence and evolution of the equality norm, first …

The New Synthesis Of Bank Regulation And Bankruptcy In The Dodd-Frank Era, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Since the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, U.S. bank regulation and bankruptcy have become far more closely intertwined. In this Article, I ask whether the new synthesis of bank regulation and bankruptcy is coherent, and whether it is likely to prove effective.

I begin by exploring some of the basic differences between bank resolution, which is a highly administrative process in the U.S., and bankruptcy, which relies more on courts and the parties themselves. I then focus on a series of remarkable new innovations designed to facilitate the rapid recapitalization of systemically important financial institutions: convertible contingent capital …

Rediscovering Corporate Governance In Bankruptcy, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay on Lynn LoPucki and Bill Whitford’s corporate reorganization project, written for a symposium honoring Bill Whitford, I begin by very briefly describing its historical antecedents. The project draws on the insights and perspectives of two closely intertwined traditions: the legal realism of 1930s, whose exemplars included William Douglas and other participants in the SEC study; and the law in action movement at the University of Wisconsin. In Section II, I briefly survey the key contributions of the corporate governance project, which punctured the then-conventional wisdom about the treatment of shareholders in bankruptcy, managers’ principal allegiance, and many …

Introduction To Institutional Investor Activism: Hedge Funds And Private Equity, Economics And Regulation, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery

All Faculty Scholarship

The increase in institutional ownership of recent decades has been accompanied by an enhanced role played by institutions in monitoring companies’ corporate governance behaviour. Activist hedge funds and private equity firms have achieved a degree of success in actively shaping the business plans of target firms. They may be characterized as pursuing a common goal – in the words used in the OECD Steering Group on Corporate Governance, both seek ‘to increase the market value of their pooled capital through active engagement with individual public companies. This engagement may include demands for changes in management, the composition of the board, …

Single Point Of Entry And The Bankruptcy Alternative, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This Essay, which will appear in Across the Great Divide: New Perspectives on the Financial Crisis, a Brookings Institution and Hoover Institution book, begins with a brief overview of concerns raised by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy about the adequacy of our existing architecture for resolving the financial distress of systemically important financial institutions. The principal takeaway of the first section is that Title II as enacted left most of these issues unanswered. By contrast, the FDIC’s new single point of entry strategy, which is introduced in the second section, can be seen as addressing nearly all of them. The …

When Should Bankruptcy Be An Option (For People, Places Or Things)?, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

When many people think about bankruptcy, they have a simple left-to-right spectrum of possibilities in mind. The spectrum starts with personal bankruptcy, moves next to corporations and other businesses, and then to municipalities, states, and finally countries. We assume that bankruptcy makes the most sense for individuals; that it makes a great deal of sense for corporations; that it is plausible but a little more suspect for cities; that it would be quite odd for states; and that bankruptcy is unimaginable for a country.

In this Article, I argue that the left-to-right spectrum is sensible but mistaken. After defining “bankruptcy,” …

Bankruptcy And Economic Recovery, Thomas H. Jackson, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

To measure economic growth or recovery, one traditionally looks to metrics such as the unemployment rate and the growth in GDP. And in terms of figuring out institutional policies that will stimulate economic growth, the focus most often is on policies that encourage investment, entrepreneurial enterprises, and reward risk-taking with appropriate returns. Bankruptcy academics that we are, we tend to add our own area of expertise to this stable— with the firm belief that thinking critically about bankruptcy policy is an important element of any set of institutions designed to speed economic recovery. In this paper, written for a book …

Earnings Management And The Effect Of Earnings Quality In Relation To Stress Level And Bankruptcy Level Of Chinese Listed Firms, Feng Li, Indra Abeysekera, Shiguang Ma

Indra Abeysekera

This paper investigates the link between earnings management and earnings quality for the Chinese firms listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2003 to 2007. The earnings quality is measured by four separate earnings attributes: accruals quality, earnings persistence, earnings predictability, and earnings smoothness. We find that the stressed/bankrupt firms prefer opportunistic earnings management; the non-stressed/non-bankrupt firms are more likely to choose more efficient earnings management than the stressed/non-bankrupt firms. We find that earnings management performs better than earnings quality in predicting future profitability. We also find that the earnings quality has deteriorated over the sample period; the …

Nonstatistical Factors Influencing Predictions Of Financial Distress And Managerial Implications In The All-Cargo Airline Industry, Robert O. Walton

Publications

All-cargo airlines carry over 50% of global airfreight, yet they are prone to bankruptcy. Many financial models are designed to predict a firms' financial health, but they do not assess many nonstatistical factors that influence the prediction capability of these models. In this study, qualitative grounded theory design was used to identify nonstatistical factors and explore how they influence bankruptcy prediction models in the all-cargo airline industry. In the first phase of the study, financial data from 2005 to 2009 for 17 all-cargo U.S. airlines were used to determine the bankruptcy prediction ability of the Kroeze financial bankruptcy model. A …

Making Sense Of The New Financial Deal, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, I assess the enactment and implications of the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress’s response to the 2008 financial crisis. To set the stage, I begin by very briefly reviewing the causes of the crisis. I then argue that the legislation has two very clear objectives. The first is to limit the risk of the shadow banking system by more carefully regulating the key instruments and institutions of contemporary finance. The second objective is to limit the damage in the event one of these giant institutions fails. While the new regulation of the instruments of contemporary finance—including clearing and exchange …

Earnings Management And The Effect Of Earnings Quality In Relation To Stress Level And Bankruptcy Level Of Chinese Listed Firms, Feng Li, Indra Abeysekera, Shiguang Ma

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper investigates the link between earnings management and earnings quality for the Chinese firms listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2003 to 2007. The earnings quality is measured by four separate earnings attributes: accruals quality, earnings persistence, earnings predictability, and earnings smoothness. We find that the stressed/bankrupt firms prefer opportunistic earnings management; the non-stressed/non-bankrupt firms are more likely to choose more efficient earnings management than the stressed/non-bankrupt firms. We find that earnings management performs better than earnings quality in predicting future profitability. We also find that the earnings quality has deteriorated over the sample period; the …

In Or Out Of Mortgage Trouble? A Study Of Bankrupt Homeowners, Melissa B. Jacoby, Daniel T. Mccue, Eric M. Belsky

Melissa B. Jacoby

We examine the determinants of missed payments and foreclosure initiation among a national sample of homeowners who filed for personal bankruptcy in 2007, using a rich dataset from the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project.

Credit access had a significant effect on keeping mortgages current across all of our models: access to, and reliance on, credit cards reduced the chance of missed payments and default, increasing the likelihood that bankruptcy could produce a fresh start. Missed mortgage payments also were associated with a substantial drop in income and with the use of a mortgage broker. The probability of foreclosure initiation was lower …

Assessing The Chrysler Bankruptcy, Mark J. Roe, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Chrysler entered and exited bankruptcy in 42 days, making it one of the fastest major industrial bankruptcies in memory. It entered as a company widely thought to be ripe for liquidation if left on its own, obtained massive funding from the United States Treasury, and exited via a pseudo sale of its main assets to a new government-funded entity. The unevenness of the compensation to prior creditors raised considerable concerns in capital markets, which we evaluate here. We conclude that the Chrysler bankruptcy cannot be understood as complying with good bankruptcy practice, that it resurrected discredited practices long thought interred …

Managing Medical Bills On The Brink Of Bankruptcy, Melissa B. Jacoby, Mirya Holman

Melissa B. Jacoby

This paper presents original empirical evidence on financial interactions between medical providers and their patients who go bankrupt. We use a nationally representative sample of people who filed for bankruptcy in 2007 to compare two popular but hotly contested methods of measuring medical burden. By applying both methods to the same filers, we find that nearly four out of five respondents had some financial obligation for medical care not covered by insurance in the two years prior to filing as measured by the survey method. The court record method paints a different picture, with only half of the cases containing …

How To Prevent Npas In Banks, Vijaya Krushna Varma Mr

VIJAYA KRUSHNA VARMA Mr

Varma suggests radical bank reforms to prevent NPAs in banking sector. Prevention is better than cure. The problem should be tackled at the source itself before it gets monster size. Instead of finding solutions and measures to reduce NPAs, the banking sector should be restructured so that there is no scope for NPAs or bad loans generation in banks.

A Semiparametric Model Approach For Financial Bankruptcy Prediction, Maria H. Kim, Paul Yoo

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

In this study, we propose a model that achieves both accurate modeling and sustainable model stability for corporate bankruptcy prediction. This model is to model the given samples accurately as well as to respond adequately to the unknown inputs by employing semiparametric approach where parametric model and nonparametric Neural Networks (NNs) are combined. By exploring the structural relationships within the available sample data, the proposed model is assumed to retain the advantages of both parametric and nonparametric models. The proposed model is compared to pure parametric models such as Multivariate Discriminant Analysis (MDA) and Logistic Regression (LR), and pure nonparametric …

The Past, Present And Future Of Debtor-In-Possession Financing, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Chapter 11's distinctive post-petition financing rules trace their ancestry back to the origins of large scale corporate reorganization in America in the nineteenth century. In this sense, post-petition financing has always been with us. But in the past decade, the role of the financers has changed. After a century in the shadows, post-petition lenders have stepped onto center stage. The DIP loan agreement has become the single most important governance lever in many large Chapter 11 cases. Why have these formerly bashful financers suddenly started hogging the spotlight? I argue in this article that the generous terms offered to DIP …