#riskmgmt

"Die passenden Investoren für diese Firmen wären professionelle Wagniskapitalgeber gewesen, die die Branchenrisiken hätten einschätzen können. Stattdessen setzten die Firmen aber auf unbedarfte Privatanleger, die sich vom grünen Image blenden ließen. [..] Im Mittelstandsmarkt fehlten die "Gatekeeper", sagt Hendrik Haag, Kapitalmarktrechtler bei der Wirtschaftskanzlei Hengeler Mueller. Damit meint er etwa große Banken, die "mit ihrer Erfahrung und ihrem Namen für die Qualität der Anleihen stehen". Bei den Mini-Bonds dagegen waren als Emissionshelfer oft kleine, eher unbekannte Banken zugange, die kaum ein Reputationsrisiko hatten und denen es oft um das schnelle Geschäft ging. [..] Gleiches trifft auf die Rating-Agenturen zu – wobei nicht die bekannten US-Player wie Moody’s oder S&P, sondern kleine deutsche Bonitätswächter am Werk waren. Besonders krass war das A-Rating, mit dem die Berliner Agentur Scope die "Traumschiff"-Anleihe auszeichnete. Die Vorzüge einer solchen Bewertung genießen normalerweise nur ausgewählte Großkonzerne wie BASF oder Daimler. Gleich im Dutzend kamen Fehlurteile von der Neusser Creditreform Rating, einer Tochter der gleichnamigen Auskunftei."

"Physicists have an old joke that goes like this: “Nobody believes a theory except the person proposing the theory. Everybody believes an experiment except the person performing the experiment.” Like all good jokes, it’s funny because it holds so much truth. Healthy (or even pathological) skepticism is the hallmark of good science. Always assume new ideas and theories and models and experimental results are wrong. Let the proponent provide persuasive evidence and argument to convince you otherwise. Do not simply believe what you’re told or shown. Science has worked out its first line of validation. For a theory, the theorist must make a prediction by proposing experiments and measurements that have never been performed. The results, moreover, should show clearly that the new theory is superior to existing theories. If there’s no prediction or no successful real-world confirmation of the prediction, then the theory is nothing more than one person’s musing. [..] financial advisors suggest that consumers take deliberate actions (such as opening unneeded loan accounts) to improve their FICO scores that have little bearing on their actual ability to repay loans. As a consequence of the visible importance of FICO, the scores themselves lose value as creditworthiness indicators. Financial underwriting methods that employ FICO scores should therefore adjust and adapt. [..] the two best uses of models are (1) the insights one gains from creating the models; and (2) the models’ quality-control exercise of testing the data. [..] the best role for data is to serve as input for judgment- and concept-based executive decisions. When the data is “too good to be true” — or otherwise in conflict with valid concepts of the business and unbiased human judgment — we must channel the experimentalist and ponder every reason the data itself might be wrong."

"Basel research, including a study the group published in 2013, found variations of as much as 20 percent in the risk weights banks attach to similar assets in the banking book, undermining confidence that the capital ratios lenders report reflect the real risks they are taking on."