Financial Risk Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Financial Risk Management - Essay Example At the business level, managers use VaR as a standard summery of market risk exposure. A benefit of the VaR which is a, the great value theory, is that it may be computed without full information of the return allocation. Semi or fully non-parametric estimation processes are obtainable for downside risk estimation. Additionally, at an adequately low confidence level the VaR calculate explicitly concentrates regulators and risk manager’s attention on uncommon losses, than on potential catastrophic great losses. The general use of VaR based risk management is that, it has become increasingly significant in the study of the belongings the option market, and the stock market of these constraints. For instance, organizations with a VaR constraint may be willing to purchase out of the money put choices on the market portfolio so as to limit their downside risk. If multiple organizations follow the similar risk management plan, then this will clearly lift the equilibrium costs of the se options. In addition the form of the returns of stock distribution in equilibrium will be influenced by the management efforts of collective risk. As an outcome, it is possible that the allocation of stock returns will become more heavy-tailed. This would involve the effort to control market risk, and therefore to decrease default risk, has it unfavorably increased the chance of such events. A part of the Long Tern Capital Management (LTCM) strategy was to expect that the increase between various rates would become limited, especially, the increases among the rates of corporate bonds and treasury bonds which are at an uncommonly high historical level. â€Å"LTCM was considered unique among hedge funds because of the large scale of its activities and size of its positions in certain markets.† (Long Term Capital Management 1999). 2. Background Barings Bank Francis Baring established Barings Bank in 1762, in UK. The British government paid commissions to Barings to raise fund s to finance wars in the mid 1800s against US and France. Barings was regarded as the London's biggest 'American House.' (The Fall of Barings Bank n.d). Between 1860 and1890, Barings was also occupied in offering loans to Argentina. Barings was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1890 when Argentina failed to make bond payments. However, major banks in London like the Bank of England came forward to assist the bank. This disaster had a key impact on Barings and it persuaded the bank to shift all its business to the North American continent. Barings started a consultancy to advice people especially like those who belong to aristocratic class, in their assets management. The bank began to grow well and continued to earn considerable profits. In 1980s, the bank commenced its operation in US again and acquired the stock broking support of Henderson Crosthwaite, which later on came to be known as BSL.  Barings Bank collapsed in 1995, because of the actions of Nick Leeson, a trader who misapp ropriated almost $1.4 billion. â€Å"The loss was due to a huge exposure to Japanese stock market.† (Barring Banks and Nick Leeson n.d). Industry analysts says that the fall of the Barings is a classic instance of poor risk management practices. The bank had entirely failed to set up an appropriate financial system, operational control system and managerial system. Due to the absence of efficient supervision and control, Leeson got the opportunity to perform his illegal trading activities and that too without being detected for a considerable period of time. The collapses of Barings Bank were happened only because of the