Since its inception, the market for credit
derivatives has shown impressive growth and has hit
a volume of more than $54 trillion in 2008. Credit
derivatives are bilateral financial contracts that
seek to transfer defined credit risks in a credit
product or bunch of credit products to a
counterparty. They have fundamentally changed the
way banks price, manage, transact, originate,
distribute and account for credit risk; they are
being used for risk management and hedging as well
as for speculation, balance-sheet management and
regulatory capital purposes.
Long celebrated as a way for banks to diffuse their
risks, credit derivatives have instead multiplied
them as they encouraged banks and other financial
firms to take on riskier loans than they should have
and exposed a much wider array of financial firms to
the risk of default.
In this book, the author carefully explains the
basics of credit risk and expands on the different
types and applications of credit derivatives.
