FinancialDistressPredictionofIndianCompanies FuturePerspectives PDF
FinancialDistressPredictionofIndianCompanies FuturePerspectives PDF
FinancialDistressPredictionofIndianCompanies FuturePerspectives PDF
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Abstract: The worldwide financial crises highlighted the serious deficiencies in risk models used for credit risk
management. Previous studies show a trend of changes in the choices of variables in the default prediction
models. Initially researchers have used only accounting variables while framing various models but now several
other factors within and outside organizational variables such as market and macroeconomic variables also
being taken into consideration for designing various models. Much of the previous work in financial distress
prediction focuses on static predictions and uses static variables in estimating the predictive model. Therefore,
there is a need of the models which can make dynamic predictions with the use of dynamic variables. This
advance warning will help management to take appropriate steps and decisions to avoid financial distress
which will help to mitigate the cost associated with financial distress and resulting business failure.
Keywords: Financial distress, Market variables, Macroeconomic variables
INTRODUCTION
Timely prediction of failure of a business firm is an important issue in the present economic system,
considering the effect of global financial crisis to the world economy in the past decade Donato and
Nieddu (2016).The worldwide financial meltdown highlighted the weaknesses in risk models used in credit
risk management Jorion (2009). The financial crisis resulted into many companies facing risk of failure
around the world. The financial crisis highlighted that even the healthy global firms must frequently observe
their financial position and of the firms with which they deal with Korol (2013).
Recently the International Monetary Fund (IMF) report prepared by Jung and Lindner (2014),
highlighted the financial weakness in the Indian corporate sector. The results of stress tests on corporate
balance sheets in India, has found that with decreasing profitability and high level of leverage, Indian firms
are facing severe problems in repayment of loans taken in the past. This is ultimately posing risk for the
quality of loan portfolio of commercial banks in India. According to the IMF, corporate debt at risk
increasing significantly and under the severe unfavourable conditions it can increase further. Failure of a
firm has lot of cost associated for its various stakeholders like employees in terms of job losses, loss of
capital for creditors.
In the recent years, many researchers have tried to predict business failures. Different researchers
have used different ways to define financial distress of a firm. There is a lack of an exact definition of
financial distress. A business is in mild financial distress when it face difficulty paying its debts on time. A
business is in serious distress when it has filed a petition for relief from its creditors under some legal
channel, or when it has consented to a filing by its creditors. The filing shows either the firm failure to pay
the debts on time or its inability to pay them within the near future. Mild financial distress may just be a
cash flow problem on temporary basis while serious financial distress results into insolvency or business
failure. A company is in default when it violates the terms and conditions of loan or bond in-denture. It is
necessary to differentiate between technical defaults and payment defaults. A technical default happens
when the debtor violates a loan agreement. Technical defaults not often lead to serious distress among
companies. They are generally solved by negotiating with creditors.
Different countries have different ways to deal with the companies suffering from financial distress.
In the US, financially distressed businesses commonly filed under chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code
Bernardo and Welch (2015) ,but in the UK, as there is no specific law related to this, it is usually liquidation,
administration or receivership that is often used when predicting business failure. Different studies have
taken different ways for defining financial distress depending upon the purpose of the study been
conducted Pompe and Bilderbeek (2005). Like Beaver (1966) used bankruptcy, bond defaults, overdrawn
bank accounts and non-payments as events of financial distress. But such an occurrence does not
necessarily imply the end of a business: only in a serious situation does credit default lead to the failure
of a business. According to Karels and Prakash (1987), “there are many definitions of failure taken for
prediction studies in the past. Some researchers define distress as when a firm actual filing for bankruptcy;
others define it as suffering financial stress or an inability to pay financial obligations”. Asquith et al
(1994) defined it as negative EBITDA interest coverage and other Hofer (1990) as negative net income
before special items. Campbell et al (2008) taken financial driven delisting and default credit rating as the
cases of financially distressed. More specifically, Pindado et al (2008); Tinoco and Wilson (2013) discussed
the finance-based definition of financial distress and argued that its definition should be consistent with
an ex-ante prediction method, i.e. independent of its outcome.”So they defined financial distress to be
that EBITDA are lower than the financial expenses or a decline in its market value for two consecutive
years.”
Earlier there was no single comprehensive and integrated policy to deal with financial distressed
firms in India. The rules related to financially distressed cases were covered in the Companies Act, 1956
and the Sick Industrial Companies Act, 1985 Bapat and Nagale (2014). “In India, an industrial company
(being a company registered for not less than five years) which has at the end of any financial year
accumulated losses equal to or exceeding its entire net worth would be referred to the Board for Industrial
and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) as a sick industrial company. But recently with the passage of
International Journal of Economic Research 174
Financial Distress Prediction of Indian Companies: Future Perspectives
insolvency and bankruptcy code bill, a single law to deal with distressed firms, promoters, employees,
creditors and other stakeholders is applicable In India. This law will ensure a time bound process of
winding up a distressed company” Roychoudhury (2016). Noticeably definitions of financial distress are
more flexible due to their background of studies and availability of data. A broader definition of corporate
default or financial distress makes modelling easier by increasing the sample size of the distress firms,
but at the same time it brings difficulties in interpreting the results of different dependent variables.
This study focuses on investigating an ex-ante model for predicting financial distress by using a financially-
based definition of distress that is independent of its legal implications, as per the criteria suggested by
Pindado et al (2008). According to this criteria, a firm is classified as financially distressed not only when
it will be registered with BIFR but also “(i) whenever its earnings before interest and taxes depreciation
and amortisation (EBITDA) are lower than its financial expenses for two consecutive years; and (ii)
whenever market value of its share will fall for two consecutive years”. This criteria estimates the capacity
of a firm to service its financial obligations which will help in advance detection of distress state of a
firm. This classification will be reliable with an ex-ante prediction method and will be independent of its
legal outcome. Taking data of sick companies suffering from severe financial distress, along with the
observations on the basis of finance based definition will also help in detecting early stages of distress
among various companies.
Survey by World Bank (Doing business in 2005 -India Regional Profile) “has concluded that it took
10 years on an average to wind up / liquidate a company in India as compared to 1 to 6 years in other
countries. Such lengthy time-frames are unfavourable to the interest of all stakeholders. The process
should be time-bound, aimed at maximising the chances of preserving value for the stakeholders as well
as the economy as a whole”. No firm, even during a time of prosperity, can be convinced of its future
prospects. Korol (2013). According to study by Jardi and Severin (2010) failure of a business is not an
unexpected event rather it is the result of a failure path, which may consist of a number of phases, each
characterized by specific signs of failure. As failure is not a sudden phenomenon and if the advance
warning signals are detected, the more time managers will have for preparing and reacting in subsequent
phases of the crisis. Therefore, forecasting default of companies is an area which has become quite
significant in recent times. “Lenders in India are able to recover only 20% of their loans when businesses
go bankrupt and average time of 4.3 years is taken for insolvency proceedings. This compares to 70%
recovery rate in developed countries and about 1.7 years of average time taken for insolvency proceedings
in developed economies. Currently, Indian economy is reeling under mounting bad loan pressure. By far
bad loans have risen to around Rs. 4,43,691 crore” Jung and Lindner (2014). Thus lenders and investors
along with various regulators require timely information on the default risk probability of the firm
within lending and investment portfolios. Early warning of financial distress or business default has
become an important research area for financial risk management. Any prediction technique should be
able to provide warning with a adequate time lag to allow for remedial actions. If the time span is
sufficient, then timely actions can be taken to correct the state of financial distress. Lenders like banks
can restrict themselves from lending money to the firms that are bound to fail or are expected to face
distress in the near future. The investors can prevent capital loss by not investing in the companies that
are likely to face financial trouble. It will also help various firms willing to maintain long-term relationships
with other companies and hence willing to deal with only those companies that will not witness any
failure in future , hence increasing the prolonged existence of their trade contacts.
175 International Journal of Economic Research
Rohit Bansal and Hari Babu Singu
that adding market based variables into the hazard model enhanced the predictive power relative to the
model with accounting ratios only. Chava and Jarrow (2004) demonstrated that market variables reflect all
publicly available information regarding firm distress. It was showed that predictive power of the market
based model will significantly outperformed an accounting based model as stock prices discount future
financial position of the company. Campbell et al (2008) further propose the use of the logarithm of
market capitalization to that of S&P 500 index.
like multiple discriminant analysis, logit model etc were frequently used Altman and Narayanan (1997).
Earlier univariate modelling methods were quite popular for modelling financial distress prediction and
non distress firms. Beaver (1966) used this method for classification between distress and sound firms. The
significance of each financial ratio was determined individually as per its ability to correctly discriminate
between the two groups of firms. Hence, if a firm value is higher than a particular cut-off point then it
would signify sound financial position otherwise weak. But this technique neglect multidimensional nature
of failure Keasey and Watson (1991). As there multiple factors determine the financial position of a company,
so a single ratio cannot explain the phenomena accurately. Altman (1968) had developed a model using
multivariate discriminant analysis where a z-score was estimated to observe the distress among firms. The
main focus of multivariate analysis is to incorporate the values of different ratios into a single weighted
index rather taking one ratio at a time, as in case of univariate analysis. This technique has been used by
other researchers like Blum (1974); Karels and Prakash (1987). Further Ohlson (1980); Westgaard and Van
der Wijst (2001); Shumway (2001); Nam et al (2008); Altman et al (2010) used logit model in prediction of
distress among companies. It is based on cumulated logistic probability function and this model will give
probability whether a particular company is in financially distress or non distress state. Apart from the
traditional statistical techniques, few other alternative non parametric techniques were also used by various
researchers. Altman et al (1994); Tsai et al (2009); Iturriaga and Sanz (2015) done default prediction using
neural network modelling techniques. “A neural network technique is a multilayer preceptron for financial
distress prediction. In this method, the hidden layer determines the mapping relationships between input
and output layers and the relationships between neurons are stored as weights of the connecting links.
Neural network technique has some advantages over the traditional statistical methods due to its strong
mapping ability based on the network structure” Jo and Lee (1997). Also, in this method, the statistical
relationships among the various factors are not necessarily to be taken into consideration Wilson and
Sharda (1994). But due to its complex nature, researchers generally found it difficult to apply. Another
artificial intelligence technique, support vector machines was applied by Min and Lee (2005); Yang et al
(2011). “It is based on the structural risk minimization principle rather than the empirical risk minimization
principle. A support vector machine is a commanding and promising data classification and function
estimation tool.” Shin et al (2005). But after comparing the accuracy of support vector machines with
neural network, Bose and Pal (2006) found this technique less effective as compare to later one.
rather than a sudden, unexpected event. In the majority of the instances, firms go through different stages
before witnessing ultimate failure Karas and Reznakova (2015). Financial distress is not a unexpected
event; impossible to forecast. So if prior warning signals are detected, there will be more time available for
managers to prepare and act to avoid possible future crisis. Therefore it will be important to frame techniques
that can reasonably forecast the performance of a firm over a period of time and which can further help
management of these companies to take possible remedial actions to avoid any kind of major financial
distress. Forecasting the occurrence of an event then becomes less vital than anticipating the dynamics of
a behaviour that could lead to failure. Jardin and Severin (2010). Past studies in financial distress prediction
focuses on static predictions and uses static variables in developing the predictive model. In this study the
main emphasis is to test dynamic predictions and to use dynamic variables in estimating the model. With
dynamic variables the model estimation allows for changes in the financial characteristics of a company
over time. Karas and Režòáková (2015).
CONCLUSION
Considering the fact that, in India number of companies experiencing financial distress has increased in
recent times. There is a rising trend of default in the times of global slowdown. The existing methods to
assess the sign of distress among companies have shortcomings which need further improvement. Previous
studies have not considered combine effect of financial ratios, market and macroeconomic variables for
prediction of financial distress in Indian context in a comprehensive manner. Therefore future studies
should help in identifying companies that are at risk of facing potential financial distress in future. This
advance warning will help management to take appropriate steps and decisions to avoid financial distress
which will help to mitigate the cost associated with financial distress and resulting business failure.
Lenders like banks could better control their risk exposure and potential future bad debts. It will also
help banks to track of borrower’s financial profile and identifying sickness at the initial stages, when a
unit will actually start becoming weak. Portfolio managers and investors could better assess the risk
profile of their investments and diversify by avoiding investing in future potential failures. Stakeholders
such as suppliers and customers would have better information about the company’s financial soundness
which will help in their long-term exclusive engagements with those entities. There is a need to explore
those issues in order to frame effective rules & policies dealing with these cases and overall betterment
of the financial system.
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