Managing Macroeconomic Risk

Yesterday Ben Bernanke’s statements about changing sentiment of the Federal Reserves’ Quantitative Easing program touched off a mini stock market crash. Though you took a solid hit in the value of your investment portfolio and retirement account the changing stance of the Fed will also impact the financial health and business conditions of small and mid-size businesses (SME). The days of near zero interest rates and the massive liquidity infusions by the Fed through Treasury purchase programs are coming to a close. That will effect the availability and the cost of capital for SMEs.

Macroeconomic risks are quickly becoming one of the greatest class of risk factors for SMEs. Credit availability, customer buying power, inflation, supply chain disruption, cyclical and market sector risks are growing in significance and threaten the profitability and financial health of all SMEs and their customers. Unfortunately, some businesses will not be able to surmount the acute challenges posed by these emerging economic risk factors and will find it difficult to continue as a going concern.

A difficult economy presents challenges for all businesses. SME’s require risk assessment tools to help better manage business threats and seize opportunities that fluctuating market conditions produce. Many believe that mitigating macroeconomic risk factors are difficult if not impossible for SMEs to mitigate. After all what can a small business do to immune itself to inflation or spiking interest rates? though it may seem to be an impossible task to shield a business from macroeconomic risks; executives that effectively engage to manage these type of threats Can profit from the opportunities severe market conditions produce.

Sum2’s risk assessment products help SMEs deal with the problem of rising macroeconomic risk factors. Small business managers use our SPOT application to aggregate and score all enterprise risk factors. This helps managers to focus on the most pressing risk factors that ironically have the potential to generate optimal returns on capital employed.

Credit|Redi is a series of assessment applications that help SMEs improve the company’s financial health. As a company’s credit rating improves, access to bank loans and other sources of capital become readily available at more favorable terms to the SME. This is a particularly pressing problem as SME’s have born the brunt of financial distress ignited by the Great Recession. As interest rates rise SMEs borrowing costs will increase placing further stress on profitability and financial health.

It brings us great satisfaction to place world class risk management tools in the hands of small businesses to better manage business threats . The macroeconomic risk module is one of twenty risk assessment modules offered in SPOT.

The effects of rising macroeconomic risk factors will begin to appear in an SME’s operations and target markets potentially stressing the company’s financial health. SPOT potential problems and opportunities before they emerge. SPOT and assess the current business conditions to make adjustments and initiate actions to overcome difficulties and seize opportunities the new business cycle is sure to present.

Sum2 Risk Assessment Applications

Risk: credit, inflation, market, buying power, customer risk, supply chain

Corporate Governance and Financial Health

Three years ago I did some work for an independent credit rating agency utilizing a quantitative methodology to determine financial health of corporations.  Dr. Patrick Caragata founder of the firm conducted a study of 200 TSX listed firms with high CGI ratings (Governance Metrics International).   Dr. Caragata was seeking to determine the correlation of Corporate Governance (CG) and financial health.  His findings revealed that “CG ratings failed to indicate when a company was in poor health 75% of the time.  In fact, they wrongly identified 32% of weak companies as being highly rated on GMI.”

Dr. Caragata also extended his model to use financial health score as an early warning signal for a listed company’s share price.  KMV, established ratings agencies, Altman’s Z Score were also determined as lagging predictors of share price.  Dr. Caragata’s research on bond pricing and CDS where better predictors of financial health momentum and ultimate predictors of share price but still failed to correlate financial health score as an early warning signal for share prices.  The problem that the model continually encountered was that valuation always exhibited a bias towards share price (market momentum)  not financial health score.  The determination of a “fair value” based on historical spreads of financial health score and share price was overly and overtly price sensitive. Perhaps a signal of an inefficient market?  This was particularly true for bubble stock anomalies and commodity sensitive equities.

Purveyors of Business Process Management (BPM) suggest that listed practitioner’s of BPM trade at a 15% premium to non-practitioners.  I wonder if its marketing boast.  Though BPM is not CG;  it does speak to having CG excellence in the corporate DNA.   A cultural commitment   to sound practices create valuation premiums and sustainable business models.  That’s the message well managed companies consistently deliver as a central theme of their value proposition.  Integrating sound practices and CG excellence into the corporate culture does create valuation premiums because it suggests an intentionality of business process deeply wedded to the enterprise mission.

I believe the radical reconfiguration of Wall Street offers a telling example of incongruity of good CG practitioners and financial health.  It was always a self evident truth that Wall Street firms that folded or transformed into commercial banks were probably some of the best rated CG enterprises.  CG excellence can do nothing to save an enterprise with a structurally flawed business model.  Though CG excellence does presuppose a board of directors in tune with the vicissitudes of the market; who would have thought that we would be looking at the extinction of the global investment banking business?  Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and the mighty Goldman Sachs were walking dinosaurs with flawed unsustainable business models?  All either folded, were acquired or became FDIC insured commercial banks.  I still can’t believe it but it’s true.  The world is being turned upside down.

Sum2 is a firm believer in coupling quantitative and qualitative risk measures to maintain operational excellence to build a healthy sustainable enterprise.  Effective CG alone cannot assure financial health.  It  must be a critical pillar of the governance, risk and compliance (GRC) triad.

When we speak about the principles of good governance, how about the original dissertation on the ideal of governance excellence.  Seemingly an insistence on an honest evaluation of reality to determine what is good is all it takes.  Its really that simple.

Visit the blog Risk Rap and the Allegory of the Cave post on FAS 157:

Sum2 welcomes the opportunity to speak with partners who share our passion for GRC excellence.

originally published 6/12/13