Collateral Posting Research Articles

Collateral Posting and Choice of Collateral Currency - Implications for Derivative Pricing and Risk Management

In recent years, we have observed the dramatic increase of the use of collateral as an important credit risk mitigation tool. It has become even rare to make a contract without collateral agreement among the major financial institutions. In addition to the significant reduction of the counterparty exposure, collateralization has important implications for the pricing of derivatives through the change of effective funding cost. This paper has demonstrated the impact of collateralization on the derivative pricing by constructing the term structure of swap rates based on the actual market data. It has also shown the importance of the ”choice” of collateral currency. Especially, when the contract allows multiple currencies as eligible collateral and free replacement among them, the paper has found that the embedded ”cheapest-to-deliver” option can be quite valuable and significantly change the fair value of a trade. The implications of these findings for market risk management have been also discussed.

The Role of Banks in the Finance of the West Yorkshire Wool Textile Industry, c. 1780–1850

The view of early British commercial banks as almost exclusive suppliers of short-term accommodation loans is further diminished by Dr. Hudson's intensive research in the surviving records of banks operating in the expanding wool manufacturing district of West Yorkshire from the turn of the century to the 1840s. By means primarily of the overdraft expedient, private banks and, after they were permitted by law, joint-stock banks, routinely made nominally short-term loans for such long-term capital purposes as construction of new plants and replacement of obsolete machinery. No laws and frequently little practical business acumen governed policies with respect to posting of collateral, holding of bank reserves against deposits, ratio of overdrafts to the borrower's level of profits, or even the special privileges granted stockholders and directors. It thus was not institutional rigidities that drove British investors to prefer overseas opportunities, Hudson theorizes, but the sheer excess of long-term capital sources, of which banks were an important one, in relation to opportunities to use them. Most striking, however, is the slowness with which old business habits gave way to new practices more appropriate to the maturing of a system of industrial finance.