Corporate Credit Risk Management

The financial crisis has shown that a significant proportion of the assets held by large corporations are exposed to credit risk that must be managed. This doctoral thesis sets out to analyse the contextual and organisational framework within which these activities are set and the practices employed by professionals in the field. This analysis draws on a set of interview-based data from large corporations in Europe and Brazil, predominantly from the chemical, energy, trading, and general manufacturing industries. Due to their diverse natures, the subjects of customer and financial institution counterparty credit risk are treated separately, addressing for each the organisation of the function, data acquisition process, and IT setup recommendable in order to effectively drive risk management, including a review for the practitioner to analyse his or her processes. A final chapter with analyses regarding trade credit insurance, sovereign risk, and quantitative special items rounds off the text making it into a comprehensive treatise on credit risk management in an industrial corporation.

Christian Langkamp is currently active as Financial Manager Asia Pacific for the Precious & Base Metal Services Business Unit of BASF Group. Before that he has held positions in BASF Group Treasury. He started in Group and Subsidiary Financing working on interest rate and FX risks including a project assignment with BASF S.A. in Sao Paulo. After the financial crisis he joined the credit risk team for the project to design and implement an early warning system for counterparty credit risk management. He has been awarded a Master's degree in Mathematics from Lincoln College, Oxford University (UK) and an MBA from RWTH Aachen.