|
Financial risk management
(FRM) had its
origins in trading floors and the
Basel Accords on banking regulation
during the 1980s and 1990s. If a unifying theme emerged, it was a need to
update asset-liability management (ALM) techniques. These tended to define
risks
in terms of their effects on a firm's accounting results—such as earnings,
net interest income, and return on assets. The proliferation of
off-balance sheet tools, including
derivatives and
securitization, were
rendering those metrics of performance easy to manipulate.
The solution of financial risk management was to ignore
accounting metrics of value and focus exclusively on
market values.
Till Guldimann (1994)
captured the new spirit:
Across markets, traded
securities have replaced many
illiquid instruments, e.g., loans and mortgages have been
securitized to
permit disintermediation and trading. Global securities markets have
expanded and both exchange traded and over-the-counter derivatives have
become major components of the markets.
These developments, along with technological
breakthroughs in data processing, have gone hand in hand with changes in
management practices: a movement away from management based on accrual
accounting toward risk management based on marking-to-market of positions.
Financial risks came to be divided into three categories:
market risk,
credit risk,
operational
risk.
New techniques for assessing and managing these risks all
focused on their impact on market value. Market risk, by definition, is
risk due to uncertainty in future market values. New credit risk models
assessed potential defaults or credit deteriorations in terms of their
mark-to-market impact. Operational risk was also assessed in terms of its
actual or potential direct costs.
Such techniques proved effective on bank trading floors,
where market values were readily available. Extending them to other parts
of the bank, or even to non-financial
corporations, proved problematic.
This was the realm of book value accounting. Market values were
difficult or impossible to secure for items such as private equity, demand
deposits or pension liabilities—not to mention factory equipment,
intellectual property or natural resource reserves.
Corporate risk management
emerged as a catch-all phrase for practices that serve to optimize risk
taking in a context of book value accounting. Generally, this includes
risks of non-financial corporations, but also those of business lines of
financial institutions that are not engaged in trading or investment
management. Risks vary from one corporation to the next, depending on such
factors as size, industry, diversity of business lines, sources of
capital, etc. Practices that are appropriate for one corporation are
inappropriate for another. For this reason, corporate risk management is a
more elusive notion than is financial risk management. It encompasses a
variety of techniques drawn from both FRM and ALM. Corporations pick and
choose from these, adapting techniques to suit their own needs. This
article is an overview.
In a corporate setting, the familiar division of risks
into market, credit and operational risks breaks down.
Of these, credit risk poses the least challenges. To the
extent that corporations take credit risk (some take a lot; others take
little), new and traditional techniques of credit risk management are
easily adapted.
Operational risk largely doesn't apply to corporations. It
includes such factors as model risk or back office errors. Some aspects do
affect corporations—such as fraud or natural disasters—but corporations
have been addressing these with internal audit, facilities management and
legal departments for decades. Also, corporations face risks that are akin
to the operational risk of financial institutions but are unique to their
own business lines. An airline is exposed to risks due to weather,
equipment failure and terrorism. A power generator faces the risk that a
generating plant may go down for unscheduled maintenance. In corporate
risk management, these risks—those that overlap with the operational risks
of financial firms and those that are akin to such operational risks but
are unique to non-financial firms—are called
operations risks.
The real challenge of corporate risk management is those
risks that are akin to market risk but aren't market risk. An oil company
holds oil reserves. Their "value" fluctuates with the market price of oil,
but what does this mean? The oil reserves don't have a market value. A
chain of restaurants is thriving. Its restaurants are "valuable," but it
is impossible to assign them market values. Something that doesn't have a
market value doesn't pose market risk. This is almost a tautology. Such
risks are business risks as
opposed to market risks.
In the realm of corporate risk management, we abandon the
division of risks into market, credit and operational risks and replace it
with a new categorization:
market risk,
business
risk,
credit risk,
operations
risk.
Corporations do face some market risks, such as commodity
price risk or foreign exchange risk. These are usually dwarfed by business
risks. In a nutshell, the challenge of corporate risk management is the
management of business risk.
Techniques for addressing business risk take two forms"
those that
treat business risks as market risks, so that techniques of FRM can be
directly applied, and
those that
address business risks from a book value standpoint, modifying or adapting
techniques of FRM and ALM as appropriate.
Both approaches are discussed below.
Techniques of the first form focus on a concept called
economic value. This is a vague notion
that generalizes the concept of market value. If a market value exists for
an asset, then that market value is the asset's economic value. If a
market value doesn't exist, then economic value is the "intrinsic value"
of the asset—what the market value of the asset would be, if it had a
market value. Economic values can be assigned in two ways. One is to start
with accounting metrics of value and make suitable adjustments, so they
are more reflective of some intrinsic value. This is the approach employed
with economic value added
(EVA) analyses. The other approach is to construct some model to predict
what value the asset might command, if a
liquid market existed for it. In
this respect, a derogatory name for economic value is
mark-to-model value.
Once some means has been established for assigning
economic values, these are treated like market values. Standard techniques
of financial risk management—such as
value-at-risk (VaR) or
economic capital
allocation—are then applied.
This economic approach to managing business risk is
applicable if most of a firm's balance sheet can be marked to market.
Economic values then only need to be assigned to a few items in order for
techniques of FRM to be applied firm wide. An example would be a commodity
wholesaler. Most of its balance sheet comprises physical and
forward
positions in commodities, which can be mostly marked to market.
More controversial has been the use of economic valuations
in power and natural gas markets. The actual energies trade and, for the
most part, can be marked to market. However, producers also hold
significant investments in plants and equipment—and these cannot be marked
to market. Suppose some energy trades
spot and
forward out three years. An asset
that produces the energy has an expected life of 50 years, which means
that an economic value for the asset must reflect a hypothetical 50-year
forward curve. The forward curve doesn't
exist, so a model must construct one. Consequently, assigned economic values are
highly dependent on assumptions. Often, they are arbitrary.
In this context, it isn't
enough to assign economic values. VaR analyses require
standard deviations and
correlations as well. Assigning
these to 50-year forward prices that are themselves hypothetical is
essentially meaningless—yet, those standard deviations and correlations
determine the reported VaR.
These dubious techniques were
widely (but not universally) adopted by US energy merchants in the late
1990s and early 2000s. The most publicized of these was
Enron Corp., which went beyond using
economic values for internal reporting and incorporated them into its
financial reporting to investors. The 2001 bankruptcy of Enron and
subsequent revelations of fraud tainted mark-to-model techniques.
The second approach to addressing business risk starts by defining
risks that are meaningful in the context of book value accounting. Most
typical of these are:
earnings
risk, which is risk due to uncertainty in future reported
earnings, and
cash
flow risk, which is risk due to uncertainty in future reported
cash flows.
Of the two, earnings risk is more akin to market risk.
Yet, it avoids the arbitrary assumptions of economic valuations. A firm's
accounting earnings are a well defined notion. A problem with looking at
earnings risk is that earnings are, well, non-economic. Earnings may be
suggestive of economic value, but they can be misleading and are often
easy to manipulate. A firm can report high earnings while its long term
franchise is eroded away by lack of investment or competing technologies.
Financial transactions can boost short-term earnings at the expense of
long-term earnings. After all, traditional techniques of ALM focus on
earnings, and their shortcomings remain today.
Cash flow risk is less akin to market risk. It relates
more to liquidity than the value
of a firm, but this is only partly true. As anyone who has ever worked
with distressed firms can attest, "cash is king." When a firm gets into
difficulty, earnings and market values don't pay the bills. Cash flow is
the life blood of a firm. However, as with earnings risk, cash flow risk
offers only an imperfect picture of a firm's business risk. Cash flows can
also be manipulated, and steady cash flows may hide corporate decline.
Techniques for managing earnings risk and cash flow risk
draw heavily on techniques of ALM—especially
scenario analysis and
simulation analysis. They also adapt techniques of FRM. In this context,
value-at-risk (VaR) becomes earnings-at-risk
(EaR) or cash-flow-at-risk (CFaR).
For example, EaR might be reported as the 10%
quantile of this quarter's earnings
(which is the same as the 90% quantile of reported loss, multiplied by
minus one).
The actual calculations of EaR or CFaR differ from those
for VaR. These are long-term
risk metrics,
with horizons of three months or a year. VaR is routinely calculated over
a one-day horizon. Also, EaR and CFaR are driven by rules of accounting
while VaR is driven by financial engineering principles. Typically, EaR or
CFaR are calculated by first performing a simulation analysis. That
generates a probability distribution for the period's earnings or cash
flow, which is then used to value the desired metric of EaR or CFaR.
One decision that needs to be made with EaR or CFaR is
whether to use a constant or contracting horizon. If management wants an
EaR analysis for quarterly earnings, should the analysis actually assess
risk to the current quarter's earnings? If that is the case, the horizon
will start at three months on the first day of the quarter and gradually
shrink to zero by the end of the quarter. The alternative is to use a
constant three-month horizon. After the first day of the quarter, results
will no longer apply to that quarter's actual earnings, but to some
hypothetical earnings over a shifting three-month horizon. Both approaches are
used. The advantage of a contracting horizon is that it addresses an
actual concern of management—will we hit our earnings target this quarter?
A disadvantage is that the risk metric keeps changing—if reported EaR
declines over a week, does this mean that actual risk has declined, or
does it simply reflect a shortened horizon?
While the two approaches to business risk management—that based on
economic value and that based on book value—are philosophically different,
they can complement each other. Some firms use them side-by-side to assess
different aspects of business risk.
This article has focused on the unique challenges of
corporate risk management. There is much else about corporate risk
management that overlaps with financial risk management—the need for a
risk management function, the role of corporate culture, technology
issues, independence, etc. See the article
Financial Risk Management for a discussion of these and other topics.
|
|
 |
|
asset-liability
management Techniques for protecting a firm's solvency in the context of accrual accounting.
capital
A firm's value—assets minus liabilities.
Basel Committee An international
committee whose efforts to standardize bank regulations have
influenced risk management practices in all industries.
credit risk Risk due to
uncertainty in a counterparty's ability to meet its obligations.
economic capital
Capital held for economic (as opposed to regulatory) purposes.
economic
profit Profit in excess of the opportunity cost of capital.
Enron debacle
In December 2001, energy trading powerhouse Enron filed for bankruptcy in the
midst of an accounting scandal.
financial
risk management Practices by which a firm optimizes the
manner in which it takes financial risk.
Group of 30 Report
An influential 1993 industry report on OTC derivatives.
Interest rate risk
Risk due to uncertain future interest rates.
legal risk
Risk from uncertainty due to legal actions or uncertainty in the applicability
or interpretation of contracts, laws or regulations.
liquidity risk
Risk due to uncertain liquidity.
market risk Exposure to the uncertain market value of a portfolio.
operational risk Risk to financial
or other institutions from inadequate or failed internal processes,
people and systems or from external events.
reinvestment
risk Risk from uncertainty in the interest rate at which
future cash flows may be invested.
risk Comprises two components:
uncertainty and exposure.
risk limit
A limit placed upon risk taking activity for the purpose of avoiding excessive
risk.
RiskMetrics A free service
launched by JP Morgan in 1994 to promote the use of value-at-risk.
scenario analysis
Formalized "what if" analysis typically performed as a part of asset-liability management
or corporate risk management.
valuation
Article about book value, market value and mark-to-model
valuation.
value-at-risk A category of
market risk measures. |
|
|
|
 |
 |
Ads by Contingency Analysis
|
|
|
 |
|
There is very little published about
corporate risk management. Two high-level books are Barton, et al
(2002)
and Lam (2003).
See the literature on economic capital or asset-liability
management. Two such books that are somewhat relevant to the
challenges of corporate risk management are Belmont (2004)
and Dermine and Bissada (2002).
Deventer and Mesler (2004)
is an excellent book on bank risk management. The focus is on
non-trading risks, so much of the material is interesting from a
corporate risk management standpoint. Finally, of course, see the
extensive literature on
financial risk management.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Guldimann,
Till (1994). Introduction, RiskMetrics Technical Document,
second edition. Morgan Guarantee: New York. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|