Corporate Credit Risk Management

The financial crisis has shown that a significant proportion of the assets held by large corporations are exposed to credit risk that must be managed. This doctoral thesis sets out to analyse the contextual and organisational framework within which these activities are set and the practices employed by professionals in the field. This analysis draws on a set of interview-based data from large corporations in Europe and Brazil, predominantly from the chemical, energy, trading, and general manufacturing industries. Due to their diverse natures, the subjects of customer and financial institution counterparty credit risk are treated separately, addressing for each the organisation of the function, data acquisition process, and IT setup recommendable in order to effectively drive risk management, including a review for the practitioner to analyse his or her processes. A final chapter with analyses regarding trade credit insurance, sovereign risk, and quantitative special items rounds off the text making it into a comprehensive treatise on credit risk management in an industrial corporation.