Riskhantering och kreditvärdighet
En undersökning av Enterprise Risk Management och dess relation till företags kreditbetyg
Background: Investors use companies? credit ratings as a base in their buy and sell decisions. Companies? credit ratings are also used as indicators of safety in the legislation. This means that credit rating agencies have an important role in the society because they communicate the company?s credit rating to investors and other actors in the society. However, the credit rating evaluation is opaque which means that it is hard to understand which information the credit ratings are based on. Previous studies have examined which information a company?s credit rating reflect but no study has examined the relationship between Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and a company?s credit rating. This relationship is important to examine because an efficient risk management like ERM enables companies to organize the way they manage their business risks, risks that are crucial for the company?s creditworthiness. Purpose: The purporse of this thesis is to explain if there is a relationship between Enterprise Risk Management and companies? credit ratings and how this relationship looks like. Method: A quantitative method was used in this study and the empirical data was collected by searches in the database Orbis, from searches in the companies? annual reports and from the credit rating agencies Moody?s and S&P. The results were generated from the empirical data with the help of statistical methods and the data was analysed with previous research and statistical tools. Results and conclusions: The results that were generated show that ERM has a positive relationship with a company?s credit rating. This indicates that companies that have an efficient risk management have a higher creditworthiness than companies without one.