The development of the private equity industry since the 2008 financial crisis

The private equity industry was experiencing a phenomenal boom at the turn of the century but collapsed abruptly in 2008 with the onset of the financial crisis. Considered one of the worst crises since the Great Depression of the 1930s, it had sent ripples around the world threatening the collapse of financial institutions and provoking a liquidity crunch followed by a huge downturn in economic activity and recession. Furthermore, the physiognomy of the financial landscape had considerably altered with banks retracting from the lending space, accompanied by a hardening of financial regulation that sought to better contain systemic risk. Given the new set of changes and challenges that had arisen from this period of financial turmoil, private equity found itself having to question current practices and methods of operation in order to adjust to the harsh realities of a new post-apocalyptic world. Consequently, this paper goes on to explore how the private equity business, management and operation model has evolved since the credit crunch with a specific focus on mature markets such as the United States and Europe. More specifically, this paper will aim to gather insights on the development of the industry since the crisis in Western Europe through a case study approach using as a base interviews with professionals working in the industry and those external to the sector but who have/have had considerable interaction with PE players from 2007 to the present.

How the full opening of the capital account to highly liquid financial markets led Latin America to two and a half cycles of ‘mania, panic and crash’

Latin America has recently experienced three cycles of capital inflows, the first two ending in major financial crises. The first took place between 1973 and the 1982 ‘debt-crisis’. The second took place between the 1989 ‘Brady bonds’ agreement (and the beginning of the economic reforms and financial liberalisation that followed) and the Argentinian 2001/2002 crisis, and ended up with four major crises (as well as the 1997 one in East Asia) — Mexico (1994), Brazil (1999), and two in Argentina (1995 and 2001/2). Finally, the third inflow-cycle began in 2003 as soon as international financial markets felt reassured by the surprisingly neo-liberal orientation of President Lula’s government; this cycle intensified in 2004 with the beginning of a (purely speculative) commodity price-boom, and actually strengthened after a brief interlude following the 2008 global financial crash — and at the time of writing (mid-2011) this cycle is still unfolding, although already showing considerable signs of distress. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the financial crises resulting from this second cycle (both in LA and in East Asia) from the perspective of Keynesian/ Minskyian/ Kindlebergian financial economics. I will attempt to show that no matter how diversely these newly financially liberalised Developing Countries tried to deal with the absorption problem created by the subsequent surges of inflow (and they did follow different routes), they invariably ended up in a major crisis. As a result (and despite the insistence of mainstream analysis), these financial crises took place mostly due to factors that were intrinsic (or inherent) to the workings of over-liquid and under-regulated financial markets — and as such, they were both fully deserved and fairly predictable. Furthermore, these crises point not just to major market failures, but to a systemic market failure: evidence suggests that these crises were the spontaneous outcome of actions by utility-maximising agents, freely operating in friendly (‘light-touch’) regulated, over-liquid financial markets. That is, these crises are clear examples that financial markets can be driven by buyers who take little notice of underlying values — i.e., by investors who have incentives to interpret information in a biased fashion in a systematic way. Thus, ‘fat tails’ also occurred because under these circumstances there is a high likelihood of self-made disastrous events. In other words, markets are not always right — indeed, in the case of financial markets they can be seriously wrong as a whole. Also, as the recent collapse of ‘MF Global’ indicates, the capacity of ‘utility-maximising’ agents operating in (excessively) ‘friendly-regulated’ and over-liquid financial market to learn from previous mistakes seems rather limited.

How the full opening of the capital account to highly liquid financial markets led Latin America to two and a half cycles of ‘mania, panic and crash’

Latin America has recently experienced three cycles of capital inflows, the first two ending in major financial crises. The first took place between 1973 and the 1982 ‘debt-crisis’. The second took place between the 1989 ‘Brady bonds’ agreement (and the beginning of the economic reforms and financial liberalisation that followed) and the Argentinian 2001/2002 crisis, and ended up with four major crises (as well as the 1997 one in East Asia) — Mexico (1994), Brazil (1999), and two in Argentina (1995 and 2001/2). Finally, the third inflow-cycle began in 2003 as soon as international financial markets felt reassured by the surprisingly neo-liberal orientation of President Lula’s government; this cycle intensified in 2004 with the beginning of a (purely speculative) commodity price-boom, and actually strengthened after a brief interlude following the 2008 global financial crash — and at the time of writing (mid-2011) this cycle is still unfolding, although already showing considerable signs of distress. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the financial crises resulting from this second cycle (both in LA and in East Asia) from the perspective of Keynesian/ Minskyian/ Kindlebergian financial economics. I will attempt to show that no matter how diversely these newly financially liberalised Developing Countries tried to deal with the absorption problem created by the subsequent surges of inflow (and they did follow different routes), they invariably ended up in a major crisis. As a result (and despite the insistence of mainstream analysis), these financial crises took place mostly due to factors that were intrinsic (or inherent) to the workings of over-liquid and under-regulated financial markets — and as such, they were both fully deserved and fairly predictable. Furthermore, these crises point not just to major market failures, but to a systemic market failure: evidence suggests that these crises were the spontaneous outcome of actions by utility-maximising agents, freely operating in friendly (light-touched) regulated, over-liquid financial markets. That is, these crises are clear examples that financial markets can be driven by buyers who take little notice of underlying values — investors have incentives to interpret information in a biased fashion in a systematic way. ‘Fat tails’ also occurred because under these circumstances there is a high likelihood of self-made disastrous events. In other words, markets are not always right — indeed, in the case of financial markets they can be seriously wrong as a whole. Also, as the recent collapse of ‘MF Global’ indicates, the capacity of ‘utility-maximising’ agents operating in unregulated and over-liquid financial market to learn from previous mistakes seems rather limited.

O canal de empréstimos bancários no Brasil: uma evidência microeconômica

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the existence and relevance of the bank-lending channel in Brazil. For that purpose we use balance-sheet data of Brazilian financial institutions, and adopt a methodology based in Kashyap and Stein (2000), who use twostage and panel estimations. We find that restrictive monetary policy – represented by interest rate increases – lower the sensibility of bank lending to the liquidity of its assets. In other words, increases in the interest rate lead to less binding bank liquidity restrictions. Therefore, the existence of a bank-lending channel for the transmission of monetary policy in Brazil is refused.

Risco operacional - modelos de alocação de capital aplicados aos bancos no Brasil

Nos últimos tempos, mensurar o Risco Operacional (RO) tornou-se o grande desafio para instituições financeiras no mundo todo, principalmente com a implementação das regras de alocação de capital regulatório do Novo Acordo de Capital da Basiléia (NACB). No Brasil, ao final de 2004, o Banco Central (BACEN) estabeleceu um cronograma de metas e disponibilizou uma equipe responsável pela adaptação e implementação dessas regras no sistema financeiro nacional. A Federação de Bancos Brasileiros (FEBRABAN) também divulgou recente pesquisa de gestão de RO envolvendo vários bancos. Todo esse processo trouxe uma vasta e crescente pesquisa e atividades voltadas para a modelagem de RO no Brasil. Em nosso trabalho, medimos o impacto geral nos banco brasileiros, motivado pelas novas regras de alocação de capital de RO envolvendo os modelos mais básicos do NACB. Também introduzimos um modelo avançado de mensuração de risco, chamado Loss Data Distribution (LDA), que alguns especialistas, provenientes do Risco de Mercado, convencionaram chamar de Value-at-Risk Operacional (VaR Operacional.). Ao final desse trabalho apresentamos um caso prático baseado na implementação do LDA ou VaR

Past and future of the bankruptcy law in Brazil and Latin America

This paper studies the Bankruptcy Law in Latin America, focusing on the Brazilian reform. We start with a review of the international literature and its evolution on this subject. Next, we examine the economic incentives associated with several aspects of bankruptcy laws and insolvency procedures in general, as well as the trade-offs involved. After this theoretical discussion, we evaluate empirically the current stage of the quality of insolvency procedures in Latin America using data from Doing Business and World Development Indicators, both from World Bank and International Financial Statistics from IMF. We find that the region is governed by an inefficient law, even when compared with regions of lower per capita income. As theoretical and econometric models predict, this inefficiency has severe consequences for credit markets and the cost of capital. Next, we focus on the recent Brazilian bankruptcy reform, analyzing its main changes and possible effects over the economic environment. The appendix describes difficulties of this process of reform in Brazil, and what other Latin American countries can possibly learn from it.

Inflation and debt indexation : the equivalence of two alternative schemes for the case of periodic payments

The presence of inflation has induced the financial institutions to implement procedures devised to protect the real values of theirs loans. Two of such procedurcs, the floaaing rale scheme and the monetary correction mechanism, tend to lead to very different streams of payments. However, whenever the floating rate scheme follows the rule of Strict adhercnce to lhe Fisher equation, lhe two procedures are financially equivalent.

Economic growth with foreign saving?

Highly indebted countries, particularly the Latin American ones, presented dismal economic outcomes in the 1990s, which are the consequence of the ‘growth cum foreign savings strategy’, or the Second Washington Consensus. Coupled with liberalization of international financial flows, such strategy, which did not make part of the first consensus, led the countries, in the wave of a new world wide capital flow cycle, to high current account deficits and increase in foreign debt, ignoring the solvency constraint and the debt threshold. In practical terms it involved overvalued currencies (low exchange rates) and high interest rates; in policy terms, the attempt to control de budget deficit while the current account deficit was ignored. The paradoxical consequence was the adoption by highly indebted countries of ‘exchange rate populism’, a less obvious but more dangerous form of economic populism.

Uma análise dos efeitos da regulação do setor de microfinanças brasileiro: o caso das Sociedades de Crédito ao Microempreendedor

The purpose of this work is to analyze the process of regulation of the sector of microfinance in Brazil, based on the regulation of the Societies of Credit to Microentrepreneurs - SCMs, the only specialized institucional form in microfinance in the National Financial System, and that, in sight of this, has its performance regulated and supervised by the Brazilian Central Bank. The regulation of the SCMs has been one of the strategies adopted by the Federal Government in our country to stimulate the generation of job and income for the population that usually is excluded from the traditional financial system, for the microentrepreneurs, who have difficulties in getting financing for its productive activities at the traditional financial institutions. However, despite the governmental measures that have been taken in the direction to try to stimulate the sector of microfinance in our country, it is considered that the current model of regulation based on the regulation of the SCMs presents obstacles that must be surpassed in order to reach the objective to facilitate the access of the formal credit to the microentrepreneurs.

A Teoria de segmentação face à satisfação do consumidor de serviços bancários: um estudo de caso em um banco de varejo

There is a intensity change within financial services industry: deregulation, technology, joint ventures and, in Brazil, privatization, increase of foreign competitors and fall of industry participating from 31 per cent to 5,4 per cent in Brazilian GDP.In this context financial institutions are working very hard to improve their market share, besides promoting customer retention and creating customer loyalty.In this paper we are presenting the scenario of industry in the 90's, opportunity to use segmentation and relationship strategies used by banks through distribution channels.The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between customer satisfaction and segmentation. To ascertain whether such a link exists, a primary study of 3.378 individuals was conducted in two branches at Rio de Janeiro in March 2001. The results suggest that there is little relationship between customer satisfaction and segmentation, besides other qualitative findings.

Modelo para avaliação do custo burocrático do FCVS (Fundo de Compensação de Variações Salariais) : um estudo de caso

In 1964, year of the military coup, the Brazilian government established a housing finance system with the intention of reducing the housing shortage that had been going on for decades. In order to reach this goal, the government created the Housing Finance System (acronym in Portuguese ¿ SFH), a set of rules which intended to set up a regulated market through standardized contracts and compulsory sources of funds. The system survived for some time, due to the state control of prices and salaries in the authoritarian regime. However, the increasing inflationary pressure obliged the government to adopt a populist subsidy policy, which left as a consequence outstanding balances at the end of the contracts that very often exceeded the value of the financed units. The solution adopted was to create a fund to settle these residual balances. Such fund should be capitalized by the government and by compulsory contributions from borrowers and financial institutions. Since the government did not make such contributions, the debt of this fund increased on a yearly basis, reaching around 3,5 % of Brazil¿s GDP in December 31, 2006. Due to the decline of private investments in the housing finance system, this debt concentrated mostly on public and state-owned companies, government agencies and public funds. The outcome of this policy was the Salary Variations Compensation Fund (acronym in Portuguese ¿ FCVS), which has a negative net equity of 76 billion reais and costs 100 million reais per year to be managed, and whose main creditor is the Federal Government itself.

Normas internacionais de contabilidade : percepções dos profissionais quanto às barreiras para sua adoção no Brasil

O crescimento dos mercados internacionais de capitais e a redução das barreiras no mundo dos negócios fazem com que o movimento pela harmonização das práticas de contabilidade entre as nações seja irreversível. Atualmente, mais de 100 países já aplicam normas harmonizadas com as International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), seja nas demonstrações individuais das companhias, seja nas demonstrações consolidadas. O Brasil também está trilhando o caminho da harmonização, porém esta não é uma transição simples. Existem problemas a serem enfrentados, relativos à capacitação de pessoas, às diferenças culturais e ao sistema jurídico (no Brasil vigora o direito romano, enquanto nos países de origem anglo-saxã vigora o direito consuetudinário). A transição pressupõe ainda a substituição de um modelo baseado em normas por outro baseado em princípios, em que a essência econômica dos fatos prevalece sobre a forma jurídica e, desse modo, ganham relevância a interpretação e o julgamento praticados pelos profissionais. A literatura destaca diversos motivos para a existência de diferenças na contabilidade entre países, os quais constituem barreiras em potencial para o alcance da harmonização contábil global. Tendo-se em vista tais considerações, o objetivo neste trabalho é investigar quais as principais barreiras para a adoção das normas internacionais de contabilidade no Brasil. A investigação baseia-se na revisão de estudos recentes sobre o tema e entrevistas com profissionais da área contábil em empresas, auditorias e no meio acadêmico. Na percepção dos entrevistados, as principais barreiras a serem superadas para a adoção das IFRS no Brasil são: a) a influência da legislação fiscal; b) a transição de um sistema baseado em regras para outro baseado em princípios e, portanto, mais subjetivo e c) a qualificação da mão de obra. No que se refere a esta última, observa-se que o novo contador deverá ter um perfil mais executivo, participando ativamente das decisões da empresa, avaliando, julgando e decidindo. Deverá também mostrar-se disponível para uma aprendizagem contínua, adaptando-se a novas situações, aprimorando seus conhecimentos sobre finanças, economia e buscando compreender o negócio da companhia como um todo.

Retenção de clientes na renegociação de créditos inadimplentes: um estudo em uma grande instituição financeira brasileira

Este trabalho analisa, sob uma perspectiva quantitativa, a retenção de clientes durante o processo de renegociação de créditos inadimplentes. O foco principal é entender quais são as variáveis que explicam a retenção destes clientes e, portanto, aprimorar o processo de cobrança de uma instituição financeira no Brasil. O tema se torna relevante à medida em que vários fatores tornam a competitividade mais difícil no ambiente de crédito no país: a concentração bancária vivida na última década, o aumento da oferta de crédito nos últimos anos, a redução dos spreads bancários, e por fim a crise econômica global que afeta em especial o setor financeiro. A pesquisa procura investigar quais variáveis melhor explicam o fenômeno da retenção. Para tanto, foram segregados clientes projetados como rentáveis pela cadeia de Markov. Em seguida, testou-se a aderência de variáveis cadastrais e contratuais à variável-resposta retenção, por duas metodologias: o algoritmo CHAID da árvore de decisão e o método stepwise da regressão logística. Os resultados indicam que o método CHAID selecionou 7 e o stepwise 8 variáveis, sendo algumas de natureza cadastral e outras que vêm do próprio contrato de renegociação. Dado que as condições do contrato influenciam a retenção e portanto o valor do cliente, sugere-se que o processo de oferta incorpore operacionalmente a noção de retenção na atividade da cobrança.

Canal de crédito: um estudo sobre a influência das questões regulatórias no mercado de crédito brasileiro

A literatura econômica discute há algum tempo as influências da política monetária no nível de produto e emprego de longo-prazo. Paralelo a este debate seminal, surgiram ao longo dos últimos anos discussões sobre os canais de transmissão de política monetária. Dentre o conjunto de canais sugeridos pela literatura, o canal de crédito é um dos que mais tem motivado estudiosos a aprofundarem o conhecimento sobre a sua forma de interação com a economia monetária e real. Por esta razão, este trabalho busca evidências da presença de um canal de crédito no Brasil que funciona através de alterações endógenas no mercado de crédito, mais propriamente através da alteração das condições do balanço dos agentes e de mudanças nos seus custos de agência, que motivam uma queda dos saldos de crédito concedidos a estes. Mas mais do que isto, através dos testes empíricos desenvolvidos, procura-se evidenciar que a presença de um canal de crédito no Brasil é reforçado por exigências regulatórias impostas aos bancos, que os tornam mais conservadores na oferta de crédito marginal ao conjunto de tomadores novos e com operações de crédito já contratadas. Em especial, o teste toma como variável a série de saldos de crédito concedidos ao longo do tempo, baseada em resoluções do Banco Central que normatizam sobre o provisionamento de crédito, em que se supõe que um choque monetário seja capaz de piorar a qualidade do balanço dos agentes, forçando as instituições financeiras a reclassificarem-os para piores classes de risco. Esta reclassificação, por sua vez, deve aumentar a base de crédito sobre a qual residem os maiores percentuais de provisionamento, o que torna os banqueiros mais conservadores e menos desejosos em ofertar crédito para o conjunto de tomadores de maior risco e para os tomadores como um todo.

Cointegração e price discovery do risco soberano brasileiro

A lei do preço único afirma que o mesmo ativo negociado em diferentes mercados deve apresentar preços equivalentes. Este trabalho busca verificar se o risco de crédito soberano brasileiro negociado no mercado internacional é precificado de forma semelhante tanto nos tradicionais mercados de títulos quanto no novo e crescente mercado de derivativos de crédito. Adicionalmente, utiliza-se a análise de Price Discovery para examinar qual dos mercados se move mais rapidamente em resposta às mudanças nas condições de crédito da economia brasileira. A análise empírica é feita por meio de modelos de séries de tempo, mais especificamente análise de cointegração e vetor de correção de erros. Os resultados confirmam a predição teórica da lei do preço único de que o risco de crédito brasileiro, tanto nos mercados de títulos quanto no mercado de derivativos de crédito, movem-se juntos no longo prazo. Por fim, a maior parte do Price Discovery ocorre no mercado de derivativos de crédito.