JBIMS-Mumbai Hosts Ashwini Kumar of HDFC for Interactive Session on Financial Crisis

JBIMS-Mumbai Hosts Ashwini Kumar of HDFC for Interactive Session on Financial Crisis

'Financial Crisis' is the buzz-word today. The ongoing financial crisis has already cast its gloomy shadow all over the world. We all have learnt a bit about the ongoing financial crisis through a superficial overview covered in various newspapers and magazines. It was time to

go under the skin of the issue and study the anatomy of the crisis. In this context, JBIMS hosted on campus Mr. Ashwini Kumar of HDFC for a session on 'Financial Crisis - An Inside View'. Mr. Kumar is also an alumnus of the institute.

Mr. Kumar started the session by taking the audience back in history to the 1980s Junk Bond crisis. He talked about the ingenuity of Mr. Michael Milken in devising the high yield speculative grade bond market. He drew a parallel between the 1980s crisis and ongoing crisis by underlining the role of credit rating given to the financial instruments.

After drawing the parallel, he then went ahead to point the difference between the 'prime' and 'sub-prime' home loan borrowers based on the FICO Score, generally known as the credit rating of an individual. He next moved on to explain the concept of 'securitization' and 'collateralized debt obligations' (CDOs). He provided critical insight into how the re-packaged CDO lead to raising the credit rating of the senior tranches above the rating of the underlying sub-prime mortgage. The senior tranches of high-yield CDOs could, thus, meet the minimum credit rating requirements of institutional investors despite the significant risk in the original underlying asset.

He then guided the audience through the various economic events post 9/11 such as the interest rates cuts and increasing housing prices until eventually the housing asset bubble had burst. The decline in housing prices is what he referred to as the tipping point which resulted in rising home loan defaults and ultimately leading to the systemic failure of the entire financial system.

While explaining the US sub-prime crisis, he also put in to context the Indian scenario. He explained how the conservative financial policy by Indian regulators avoided a similar debacle in India. The session concluded with a detailed round of questions and answers. The session was indeed a great learning experience for all the aspiring financial managers.

Concluded.

Contributed by -
Sameer Dohadwala,
Corporate Relations Committee,
Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.

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