This book exemplifies the potential of FinTech to deliver important economic and societal gains, such as enhancing competition and financial inclusion to deliver tailored financial products and services at more affordable prices and at greater convenience. The emergence of FinTech directly challenges the business models of incumbent financial intermediaries like banks, which are adapting by developing their own FinTech offerings and partnering with FinTech and large technology firms. FinTech also constitutes both known and unknown risks to financial stability and challenges regulators to evaluate whether existing regulations are sufficient. The emergence of FinTech as a global phenomenon requires insightful cross-country analysis and different perspectives to evaluate its development and associated opportunities and challenges. This book will be of interest to practitioners, regulators and students of this essential enabling technology that is a major component of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Dr. Sekhar offers comprehensive knowledge on the mutual fund industry in India and provides ready-made practical information for investors. He presents an overview of investment patterns for both public and private sector mutual funds, and analyses the performance of selected schemes using various measures of risk.

This book presents new methodologies for rating non-financial issuers and project ratings based on the BFO (Brusov-Filatova-Orekhova) theory of capital cost and structure, and its perpetuity limit (Modigliani-Miller theory), as well as modern investment models created by the authors. It first provides a critical analysis of the methodological and systemic shortcomings of the current credit ratings of non-financial issuers and project ratings. In order to increase the objectivity and accuracy of rating assessments, it then modifies the BFO theory for companies of arbitrary age as well as and the perpetuity limit (Modigliani-Miller theory) for rating needs. The authors also incorporate the financial indicators used in the rating methodology into both the BFO theory and the Modigliani-Miller theory. Within the framework of the modified BFO theory for rating needs, they then present a detailed study of the dependence of the weighted average cost of capital of WACC, used as the discount rate for discounting financial flows, on the financial ratios used in the rating, on the age of the company, on the leverage level and on the level of taxation for a wide range of values of equity cost and debt cost for companies of arbitrary age. This makes it possible to correctly assess of the discount rate, taking into account the values of financial ratios. The use of well-established corporate finance theories (BFO theory and its perpetuity limit) opens up new horizons in the rating industry, providing an opportunity to switch from mainly qualitative methods for determining the creditworthiness of issuers to mainly quantitative methods in rating, and as such improving the quality and accuracy of rating scores.

This book examines the effect of banking on the real economy and society, focusing on banking supervision as the decisive factor in steering banking activities and determining the social outcome of the game of finance. Banking is like a cardiovascular system for our society. If it functions correctly, it allows the economy to operate smoothly. On the other hand, if it malfunctions it becomes a doomsday device. This creates an asymmetry of risks - the asymmetry between the potential dire consequences and the modest rewards of accepting those risks. Banking was one of the critical technological factors enabling the transition from the middle ages and the creation of modern society. However, while today it contributes little to economic growth, its malfunction has a profound and lasting adverse impact. The book explains why, how and what. Why is it important to keep tight supervision of the banks? How can banking supervision improve stability, not only of the financial system but also of the whole human society? What went wrong with the regulation in the past?

This book gathers the proceedings of the ICAFFI International Conference on Accounting, Finance and Financial Institutions. The main topics addressed include: corporate finance, financial markets and asset pricing, empirical finance, taxation, financial risk management, international finance, financial econometrics, financial reporting and accounting standards, managerial accounting, measuring financial performance, accounting information systems, and current issues in accounting and finance in emerging and other markets. Presenting both cutting-edge research and a broad set of methods, and combining practical and theoretical perspectives, the book offers a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners and regulators alike.

Drawing upon established academic theory, the study argues that the Big Four, as part of a globalizing transnational capital class, has dominated indigenous firms by bringing to China an ideology that came to be accepted as normative. By winning this battle of ideology, the Big Four gained access to the coercive power of the State, and to the power of transnational institutions that have subsumed part of the power of the State. Indigenous firms have pursued a counter-hegemonic strategy of undermining the ideological superiority of the Big Four through the infiltration and modification of institutional arrangements following what the academic literature calls "the long march through the institutions.

Financial services technology and its effect on the field of finance and banking has been of major importance within the last few years. The spread of these so-called disruptive technologies, including Blockchain, has radically changed financial markets and transformed the operation of the industry as a whole. This is the first multidisciplinary handbook of FinTech and Blockchain covering finance, economics, and legal aspects globally. With comprehensive coverage of the current landscape of financial technology alongside a forward-looking approach, the chapters are devoted to the spread of structured finance, ICT, distributed ledger technology (DLT), cybersecurity, data protection, artificial intelligence, and cryptocurrencies. Given an unprecedented 2020, the contributions also address the consequences of the current emergency, and the pandemic stroke, which is revolutionizing social and economic paradigms and heavily affecting Fintech, Blockchain, and the banking sector as well, and would be of particular interest to finance academics and researchers alongside banking and financial services professionals.

This book sheds light on current issues in sustainable finance through an in-depth analysis and discussion of relevant sustainable products and sustainable initiatives of several financial institutions. This edited collection critically presents and discusses several relevant theoretical issues, case studies of innovative financial products and sustainable institutions, as well as empirically investigates issues related to both financial and social performance. The book focuses on several innovative products across the sustainable finance ecosystem, including social impact bonds, crowdfunding and green bonds. Similarly, the book spotlights the sustainable investment strategies of institutions ranging from family foundations to asset managers.

This book explores how the global financial and European sovereign debt crises have forced small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMEs) to reassess and adapt their funding strategies. At the heart of the matter is the worsening access to bank credit for such enterprises. Through this discussion we learn how crucial an understanding of SME-financing is to policy makers, in light of the fact that SMEs dominate the business landscape in Europe and are the main drivers of employment, growth and innovation in the European economy. Contributing chapters present expert analysis and investigate many topics including the problems faced by SMEs in accessing bank credit and the cost of funding and its determinants. Particular attention is also given to how credit-constrained enterprises may reformulate their funding strategies by employing alternative, non-bank, financial resources, and how regulators could support SMEs in broadening and improving their funding opportunities.

This comprehensive account of financial regulation and supervision in times of crisis analyses the complex changes under way regarding the new financial regulatory structures in the EU. Focusing on the organisation of financial supervision, it deals with the background to the reforms, the architecture of the regulatory system, the likely implications for the financial institutions and the challenge of international co-operation. Changes in the US have been heavily criticised and in Europe a brand new regulatory system with three new regulatory agencies and a systemic risk board has been developed. National systems are in the process of being updated. International cooperation, although still difficult, has made progress, with the Financial Stability Board now acting on behalf of the G.20. Central bank cooperation has improved significantly and in the meantime, sectoral regulations are being adapted in full speed, such as Basel III, AIDMD, MiFID and many others. This book gives an overall view of these complex changes. The first section of the book provides an assessment of the reforms and considers the background to their making. In the section on regulatory structure there is analysis of the new regulatory bodies, their complex competences and actions. The book also takes a critical look at their likely effectiveness. The final section of the work considers the actual implementation of the new rules in a cross-border context.

Intangible assets are becoming increasingly important as value drivers for multinational companies. It is a strategic question how to allocate intangibles within the multinational corporation. It needs to be defined by whom and under which conditions they can be utilized. Typical IP migration models such as licensing, joint development and transferring are becoming a focal point within tax audits across the globe. Hence,defining an intangibles system that fulfils the tax requirements is of utmost strategic importance for multinational corporations. A central question is how to value intangibles in line with the arm's length principle as is required internationally for transfer pricing purposes. Edited by leading transfer pricing and valuation experts in Europe, this comprehensive book offers practitioners an effective road map for identifying, valuing and implementing intangibles for transfer pricing purposes under consideration of both the OECD and local perspectives. It is therefore a must-have book for transfer pricing and valuation practitioners on all levels of experience. The book starts with an introduction to the role of intangibles in the world of transfer pricing including typical intangibles migration models. It describes common intangible assets across all types of industries, including e.g. automotive, consumer goods and software.Using several numerical examples, the book then covers state-of-the-art valuation methods including how to apply these methods in practice in a way consistent with the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines. The different country chapters written by local experts provide country-specific guidance on the legal framework concerning intangible assets from a transfer pricing and valuation perspective. Finally, the book covers practical advice on the implementation of an intangible assets system. This book offers invaluable guidance to practitioners seeking tools to apply the arm's length principle in the world of intangibles.

This book offers an overview of the best-working strategies in the field of equity and fixed income mutual fund-based portfolio management. This timely research considers different market conditions, such as global financial crises, across various geographical regions such as the USA and Europe. Combining academic and practical findings, the author presents a practitioner perspective on mutual fund-based portfolio strategies, appealing not only to finance scholars but also professionals within the asset management industry. This book synthesizes a large part of the academic research to date on the mutual fund industry by drawing from the most widely cited academic journals. The author makes a systematic use of numerical examples to facilitate the understanding of Investment themes organized around several important topics: size, diversification, flows, active management, volatility, performance persistence and rating.

This volume presents a collection of contributions dedicated to applied problems in the financial and energy sectors that have been formulated and solved in a stochastic optimization framework. The invited authors represent a group of scientists and practitioners, who cooperated in recent years to facilitate the growing penetration of stochastic programming techniques in real-world applications, inducing a significant advance over a large spectrum of complex decision problems.

After the recent widespread liberalization of the energy sector in Europe and the unprecedented growth of energy prices in international commodity markets, we have witnessed a significant convergence of strategic decision problems in the energy and financial sectors. This has often resulted in common open issues and has induced a remarkable effort by the industrial and scientific communities to facilitate the adoption of advanced analytical and decision tools. The main concerns of the financial community over the last decade have suddenly penetrated the energy sector inducing a remarkable scientific and practical effort to address previously unforeseeable management problems. This proposal aims to include in a unified framework for the first time an extensive set of contributions related to real-world applied problems in finance and energy, leading to a common methodological approach and in many cases having similar underlying economic and financial implications.

During the spring and the summer of 2007 the School of Stochastic Programming held in Bergamo (www.unibg.it/sps2007), and the eleventh symposium on Stochastic Programming in Vienna (http: //www.univie.ac.at/spxi), offered two venues for the presentation of the chapters included in the volume. After the two events, during the fall of 2007, all the invited contributors enthusiastically accepted the invitation to present their original work in the projected volume, from which this proposal was developed.

The volume is structured in three parts, devoted to contributions related to financial applications - Part I, with 7 chapters; energy applications - Part II, with 8 chapters; and to specific theoretical and computational issues - Part III, with 6 chapters -- recently developed in the scientific community and explicitly related to the applied problems presented.

The inventive process is the most important driver of economic growth. Venture capital (VC) funds have contributed a small, but critical, part to the inventive process. VC funds boost the inventive process by selecting a small number of radical ideas out a large flow of ideas and invest in their testing, development and commercialization. They bring together capital from general savings, management capabilities and business experience. When successful, VC-backed companies can contribute substantially to the welfare of society. In this book, VC funds are discussed in the context of macroeconomics, industrial organization, financial intermediation and financial economics. The authors adopt a comprehensive overview to provide clearer insight into the role of VC funds in the capital market and the way they operate.

This book proposes three normative frameworks pertaining to risk-measurement, disclosure and governance using expert opinion and data from the top 429 non-financial companies (of the NIFTY 500 index) over a 10-year period. The book offers a novel contribution to the global literature on disclosure quality by presenting a composite measure of the quality as well as quantity of risk disclosures. Focusing on the quality of risk disclosures and risk governance structures, and using sophisticated methodology to tackle the issue of endogeneity, the book explores the important yet uncharted confluence of accounting information, risk and corporate governance. It addresses the interplay between three facets of risk, and is corroborated by practitioners' perspectives as well as case studies. It is an excellent resource for practitioners, professionals and policy-makers, in addition to researchers working on the topic.

This book explores consumer protection in the major financial markets in the world and provides an international comparison among the countries of different cultural background and economic development. Each chapter describes the major issues of financial consumption in the selected country and the efforts to counter the problems of financial consumption. The innovation and renovation in the financial institutions and the public policies for consumer protection are also analyzed for their potential impacts on the future development of financial markets.

This book explores the formation and evolution of Scandinavian central banks. It begins by defining the nature of "central banking" in general, before moving on to investigate how and when it became meaningful to regard today's Scandinavian central banks as such. It also explores how Scandinavian central banks have conformed to the defined ideals of "central banks" over the last 100 years, clarifying the distinctions between commercial banks and central banks, and between central banks and departments of governments. The author shows how the outbreak of the Great War was the catalyst which fundamentally transformed the originally purely commercial banks into "central banks". The book also analyses how different the three Scandinavian central banks are, how these differences can be explained by the different political and economic circumstances surrounding their original formation, and the differences in the political environments in which they later developed.

For many academics, students, and professionals, the field of commodities is a black box. This book explores commodities in a holistic manner, presenting concepts from a multidisciplinary business and financial perspective, and offering a panoramic view of the global commodity business and markets. In this book, the author presents core issues related to global commodities with recent data including COVID-19. The book introduces the key physical commodities traded globally and some related issues such as the global supply chain, global trading, transportation, storage, and how to finance global commodity trades. Then, it discusses how global commodity businesses and traders manage global risks related to commodity production (generation or extraction), transportation, storage, the final delivery, and currency exchange. Additionally, the book discusses financial commodities, the origins of global commodity derivatives and exchanges, the rationale behind the birth of commodity futures and trading, hedging, speculation, financialization, and manipulation of commodity markets, and how financial trading is executed in real life. In the last section, the author also discusses sustainability issues related to global commodities and the financial valuation aspects of the global commodity businesses supported by examples from real cases with recent data.

This timely book addresses the effects and implications of rapid technological changes within the financial services industry on Islamic finance and Islamic banks. Exploring current challenges, opportunities and threats, the authors provide an overview of how FinTech can operate within an Islamic context, under the Shari'ah principles or the Halal framework, for example. Examining the potential opportunities of Islamic FinTech from a socio-economic perspective, this edited collection will be of use to anyone researching FinTech or Islamic Finance as well as practitioners and policy-makers involved in banking and financial services.

Industry 4.0 has spread globally since its inception in 2011, now encompassing many sectors, including its diffusion in the field of financial services. By combining information technology and automation, it is now canvassing the insurance sector, which is in dire need of digital transformation. This book presents a business model of Insurance 4.0 by detailing its implementation in processes, platforms, persons, and partnerships of the insurance companies alongside looking at future developments. Filled with business cases in insurance companies and financial services, this book will be of interest to those academics and researchers of insurance, financial technology, and digital transformation, alongside executives and managers of insurance companies.

Reinhard H. Schmidt The impressive development of the finance literature with its emphasis on asset pricing and the formal modeling of incentive systems during the past three decades, has largely relegated the business and operational aspects of banking as an industry from the agenda of academic research. Though this is understandable, it is especially regrettable in view of the dynamic dev- opments in the banking industry which have started about a decade ago and are currently in full swing. Fortunately, there are now signs of a change to the effect that banking is back on the research agenda. The p- sent book by Professor De Laurentis and his co-authors is a highly inno- tive and interesting manifestation of this reorientation. Banking is an important part of any financial system, and it is especially important in the financial systems of the countries of Continental Europe, such as Italy, France, and Germany, which have been bank-based for d- ades and which are, in my view, likely to remain bank-based for the fo- seeable future. There are many reasons, based on empirical and theoretical considerations, to believe that strong banks are not only important for the banking industry itself, but also for the respective national economies.

This book is a simple and concise text on the subject of security analysis and portfolio management. It is targeted towards those who do not have prior background in finance, and hence the text veers away from rather complicated formulations and discussions. The course 'Security Analysis and Portfolio Management' is usually taught as an elective for students specialising in financial management, and the authors have an experience of teaching this course for more than two decades. The book contains real empirical evidence and examples in terms of returns, risk and price multiples from the Indian equity markets (over the past two decades) that are a result of the analysis undertaken by the authors themselves. This empirical evidence and analysis help the reader in understanding basic concepts through real data of the Indian stock market. To drive home concepts, each chapter has many illustrations and case-lets citing real-life examples and sections called 'points to ponder' to encourage independent thinking and critical examination. For practice, each chapter has many numericals, questions, and assignments