Roberto Savona

The way in which leverage and its expected dynamics impact on firm valuation is very different from what is assumed by the traditional static capital structure framework. Recent work that allows the firm to restructure its debt over time proves to be able to explain much of the observed cross-sectional and time-series variation in leverage, while static capital structure predictions do not. The purpose of this book is to re-characterize the firm’s valuation process within a dynamical capital structure environment, by drawing on a vast body of recent and more traditional theoretical insights and empirical findings on firm evaluation, also including asset pricing literature, offering a new setting in which practitioners and researchers are provided with new tools to anticipate changes in capital structure and setting prices for firm’s debt and equity accordingly.

The way in which leverage and its expected dynamics impact on firm valuation is very different from what is assumed by the traditional static capital structure framework. Recent work that allows the firm to restructure its debt over time proves to be able to explain much of the observed cross-sectional and time-series variation in leverage, while static capital structure predictions do not. The purpose of this book is to re-characterize the firm’s valuation process within a dynamical capital structure environment, by drawing on a vast body of recent and more traditional theoretical insights and empirical findings on firm evaluation, also including asset pricing literature, offering a new setting in which practitioners and researchers are provided with new tools to anticipate changes in capital structure and setting prices for firm’s debt and equity accordingly.

In April 2010 Europe was shocked by the Greek financial turmoil. At that time, the global financial crisis, which started in the summer of 2007 and reached systemic dimensions in September 2008 with the Lehman Brothers’ crash, took a new course. An adverse feedback loop between sovereign and bank risks reflected into bubble-like spreads, as if financial markets had received a wake-up call concerning the disregarded structural vulnerability of economies at risk.These events inspired the SYRTO project to “think and rethink? the economic and financial system and to conceive it as an “ensemble? of Sovereigns and Banks with other Financial Intermediaries and Corporations. Systemic Risk Tomography: Signals, Measurement and Transmission Channels proposes a novel way to explore the financial system by sectioning each part of it and analyzing all relevant inter-relationships. The financial system is inspected as a biological entity to identify the main risk signals and to provide the correct measures of prevention and intervention.