Abstract
This article develops two models for predicting the default of Russian Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The most general questions that the article attempts to answer are ‘Can the default risk of Russian SMEs be assessed with a statistical model?’ and ‘Would it sufficiently demonstrate high predictive accuracy?’ The article uses a relatively large data set of financial statements and employs discriminant analysis as a statistical methodology. Default is defined as legal bankruptcy. The basic model contains only financial ratios; it is extended by adding size and age variables. Liquidity and profitability turned out to be the key factors in predicting default. The resulting models have high predictive accuracy and have the potential to be of practical use in Russian SME lending.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, R. (2007) The Credit Scoring Toolkit. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Voronova, T. and Kudinov, V. (2007) A happy medium: The vast majority of large banks already lend to small and medium-sized business, Vedomosti, December.
Expert. (2009) How Much the Crises has Influenced the Lending Market for Small and Medium-sized Businesses. Technical Report.
Beaver, W. (1966) Financial ratios as predictors of failure. Journal of Accounting Research 4: 71–111.
Altman, E. (1968) Financial ratios, discriminant analysis and the prediction of corporate bankruptcy. Journal of Finance 23: 589–609.
Altman, E., Eom, Y.H. and Kim, D.W. (1995) Failure prediction: Evidence from Korea. Journal of International Financial Management and Accounting 6: 230–249.
Balcaen, S. and Ooghe, H. (2006) 35 years of studies on business failure: An overview of the classic statistical methodologies and their related problems. British Accounting Review 38: 63–93.
Taffler, R.J. (1982) Forecasting company failure in the UK using discriminant analysis and financial ratio data. Journal of Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General) 145: 342–358.
Lennox, C. (1999) Identifying failing companies: Re–evaluation of the logit, probit and DA approaches. Journal of Economics and Business 51: 347–364.
Back, P. (2005) Explaining financial difficulties based on previous payment behaviour, management background variables and financial ratios. European Accounting Review 14: 839–868.
Shumway, T. (2001) Forecasting bankruptcy more accurately: A simple hazard model. Journal of Business 74: 101–124.
Lazareva, G.I. (2002) Defining the probability of corporate bankruptey. Collection of research papers, series ‘Economics’, North Caucasus State Technical University, Stavropol.
Kryukov, A.F. and Egorychev, I.G. (2001) The analysis of methods of predicting crisis situations in commercial organisations by using financial indicators. Management in Russia and abroad, http://www.mevriz.ru/articles/2001/2/937.html, accessed 8 September 2008.
Agarwal, V. and Taffler, R.J. (2007) Twenty-five years of the taffler z–score model: Does it really have predictive ability? Accounting and Business Research 37: 285–300.
Davydova, G.V. and Belikov, A.Y. (1999) A methodology for the quantitative assessment of corporate bankruptcy risks Risk Management 3 (3): 13–20.
Hair, J.F., Black, W.C., Babin, B.J., Anderson, R.E. and Tatham, R.L. (2006) Multivariate Data Analysis. NJ, USA: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Klecka, W. (1980) Discriminant Analysis. Sage Publications.
Ito, K. and Schull, W.J. (1964) On the robustness of the t02 test in multivariate analysis of variance when variance-covariance matrices are not equal. Biometrika 51: 71–82.
Hamer, M.M. (1983) Failure predictions: Sensitivity of classification accuracy to alternative statistical methods and variable sets. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy 2: 289–307.
Back, P. (1996) Choosing Bankruptcy Predictors Using Discriminant Analysis, Logit Analysis and Genetic Algorithms. Turku Centre for Computer Science. Technical Report.
Gombola, M.J., Haskins, M.E., Ketz, J.E. and Williams, D.D. (1987) Cash flow in bankruptcy prediction. Financial Management 16 (Winter): 55–65.
Field, A. (2005) Discovering Statistics Using SPSS, 2nd edn. London: SAGE Publications.
Huberty, C.J. and Olejnik, S. (2006) Applied MANOVA and Discriminant Analysis, 2nd edn. Hoboken: Wiley-Interscience.
Taffler, R.J. (1983) The assessment of company solvency and performance using a statistical model. Accounting and Business Research 15 (52): 295–308.
Song, M., Podoynitsyna, K., Van Der Bij, H. and Halman, J.I.M. (2008) Success factors in new ventures: A meta-analysis. Journal of Product Innovation Management 25: 7–27.
Hunter, J. and Isachenkova, N. (2001) On the Determinants of Industrial Firm Failure in the UK and Russia in the 1990s. ESRC Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge. Technical Report, Working Paper no. 208.
Ohlson, J.A. (1980) Financial ratios and probabilistic prediction of bankruptcy. Journal of Accounting Research 18: 109–131.
Charitou, A., Neophytou, E. and Charalambous, C. (2004) Predicting corporate failure: Empirical evidence for the UK. European Accounting Review 13: 465–497.
Altman, E.I., Haldeman, R.G. and Narayann, P. (1977) Zeta analysis: A new model to identify bankruptcy risk of corporations. Journal of Banking and Finance 1: 29–54.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
1recently completed her PhD in Small Business Finance at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests include credit scoring and other modern lending technologies, entrepreneurship, institutional theory and emerging markets.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lugovskaya, L. Predicting default of Russian SMEs on the basis of financial and non-financial variables. J Financ Serv Mark 14, 301–313 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/fsm.2009.28
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fsm.2009.28