Merton Credit Risk Model, a Case Study

In a previous post entitled Credit Risk Management Using Merton Model we provided a brief theoretical description of the Merton structural credit risk model. Note that, The Merton model is an analysis model – named after economist Robert C. Merton – used to assess the credit risk of a company’s …

Interest Rate Swap-Derivative Pricing in Excel

An interest rate swap (IRS) is a financial derivative instrument that involves an exchange of a fixed interest rate for a floating interest rate.  More specifically, An interest rate swap’s (IRS’s) effective description is a derivative contract, agreed between two counterparties, which specifies the nature of an exchange of payments …

Credit Risk Management Using Merton Model

R. Merton published a seminal paper that laid the foundation for the development of structural credit risk models. In this post, we’re going to provide an example of how it can be used for managing credit risks. Within the Merton model, equity of a firm is considered a call …

Are Collateralized Loan Obligations the New Debt Bombs?

Last year, in a post entitled Credit Derivatives-Is This Time Different we wrote about credit derivatives and their potential impact on the markets. Since then, they have started attracting more and more attention. For example, Bloomberg recently reported that collateralized loan obligations (CLO), a type of complex credit derivatives, are …

Overnight Index Swap Discounting

The overnight index swap (OIS) has come into the spotlight recently, due to the widening of the Libor-OIS spread. For example, the Economist recently reported: WATCHING financial markets can be like watching a horror film. A character walks into the darkness alone. A floorboard creaks. The latest spooky sign is …