Westley and MacLeans Model of Communication
Yet another achievement in the discipline of communication was the Westley and MacLean’s model of communication proposed in the year 1957 by Bruce Westley and Malcolm S. MacLean Jr. Let us try to understand this model with the help of below examples: At night, when suddenly an individual experiences the shaking and trembling of the […]
Intercultural Communication: The Hofstede Model
One of the most widely used frameworks for analyzing cultural differences is the model developed by the eminent cultural theorist, Geert Hofstede. In this model, the differences in culture between countries have been plotted along five dimensions, which can be used as the basis for predicting the cultural differences between different countries. The model was […]
Role of HR Consulting in Redesigning Organizational Structure
Organizational structure is the driving force behind the performance and growth of the organization. For an organization to achieve success and competitive advantage, it is highly important that there should be complete alignment between the organizational structure and the strategic goals of the organization. A properly coordinated organizational structure improves the flow of information and […]
Women and Leadership
Unlike male leaders, the reference point for a good leadership has been inadequately defined for women leaders. The traditional and concretely defined gender roles in the society have also influenced the research and findings on women leadership, a role, which is divorced from the stereotype roles identified for women. So, it becomes rather challenging for […]
Approaches to Public Administration
We have come across a number of times during our exploration of the topic, that it is somewhat difficult to define public administration in concrete terms. It has close association, interaction and influences from several fields of studies like law, political and social science administrative science and human relations and even behavioral science for that […]
The global financial system is connected to markets. Markets are where companies go to if they want to raise funds. They are also the place where current investors go when they want to liquidate their existing investments. Hence, it would be fair to say that the financial system of the entire world is closely intertwined with the global market system.
Now, the fundamental principle of an efficient marketplace is that firms are not price makers. Instead, they are price takers. This means that they have very little control over the prices in the market.
The absence of control obviously means that there is a risk attached to it. This risk is called market risk. In this article, we will discuss the concept of market risk in detail.
Market risk is the risk that a change in the market value of an asset or liability held by the firm will lead to financial losses to the firm. This includes the value of the assets and liabilities held on the balance sheet as well as those which are held off the balance sheet.
Market risk is the risk of a negative change in the net worth of a company due to changes in external markets such as stock markets, bond markets, and currency markets. Understanding and mitigating market risk, in a timely manner, is extremely important. The inability to do so has led to the bankruptcy of several firms which were caught off guard during the dot-com crisis, Enron crisis, or even the subprime mortgage crisis.
Measuring market risk is a fairly complicated process. We will explain it in detail in the later parts of this module. However, for now, it is important to understand that market risk is a function of market volatility.
Volatility is defined as the degree of change in the value of an asset on a day-to-day basis. This is the reason why equity investments are said to have more risks as compared to debt investments since their value tends to fluctuate more.
Measures such as standard deviation are used to understand the dispersion in the data. This is because volatility is calculated by finding a mean price and then observing the spread of the distribution of the data.
Hence, the standard deviation is considered to be a valid measure are to estimate market risk. The more sophisticated way to measure market risk is by using a technique called Value At Risk (VaR) which will be explained later in this module.
For a market risk to arise, the company has to be somehow connected to that market either in a direct or an indirect manner. Since equity, commodity, forex, and interbank markets are some of the largest markets in the world, they are also major contributors to market risk.
As a result, a change in the value of these goods and services causes a change in the input price which can cause a huge negative financial impact on the financials of a company. Therefore, some companies are closely linked to the market and seemingly small changes in the market have a huge impact on them.
It is possible for firms to face duration mismatch or interest rate mismatch. Such issues can be significant and can even lead to bankruptcy if the firm is making leveraged bets. Also, the coupon payments of many bonds are linked with the benchmark interest rates. This too causes
Also, many companies raise capital from other markets because the cost of capital is lower. Here too, currency risks are involved. In such cases, the change in the value of one currency relative to the other will cause immense financial loss to some companies.
The fact of the matter is that companies in the modern world have to be linked to the financial markets. Hence, it is impossible to avoid market risks. Therefore, the creation and management of a system to measure and mitigate market risk are of utmost importance to the financial well-being of any corporation.
The market risk management system has to be suitable for the nature and scale of the organization. In many cases, the organization may not be directly exposed to these risks. However, some of their stakeholders might be exposed to them which would change their actions and would therefore impact the organization in an indirect manner.
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