In the Bank of America/Exult case, the bank was looking to get out of the human resource transaction business. They looked to Exult to help them manage their 120,000 associates. To be successful at this, the bank needed an entire infrastructure including an 850-person call center, telecommunications network, and Web site to manage the volume. With the transfer of the bank’s HR call center to Exult, which had the infrastructure already in place, the bank could focus its energy on servicing its customers’ financial needs.

NASA is very capable of launching probes toward the sun. However, APL at Johns Hopkins has a track record of being able to launch targeted missions more economically than NASA. NASA’s real expertise lies in its ability to manage multiple missions while making sure taxpayers’ monies are being spent wisely. It makes sense that NASA, with its strong management competencies, provides mission oversight while others contribute based on their strengths.

For purposes of risk management bonds are often grouped according to agency ratings based on the assumption that bonds with similar ratings tend to show a high degree of comovement. Breger et al. (2003) examine whether the correlation between individual bonds increases if they are grouped by implied ratings, that is by spread classes rather than by agency ratings. The rationale for this would be that market valuations are a better indicator for the drivers of credit spread changes, namely perceived credit quality and risk exposure, than are agency ratings. In their empirical study they find that bonds of the same spread class are more similar than bonds with the same rating from a risk/return perspective. Breger et al. (2003) conclude that the classification of bonds based on market data provides a more reliable basis for modeling return relationships than does a classification by agency ratings. However, one has to note that the motivation behind this study differs significantly from the rating agencies’ approach. The objective is not to predict default risk, but rather to improve the classification of corporate borrowers and provide a basis for reliable spread risk forecasts.

The following paragraph will deal with default rates because they are of central importance for high-yield investors. We compare the three major default peaks since 1920. Default rates have to be distinguished between “issuer-weighted” and “dollar-weighted”. The increasing amount of Fallen Angels in 2002 resulted in a sharp increase of the “dollar-weighted” default rate.

High-yield spreads tend to lead default rates, which means that a tightening will occur prior to a fall in the default rate because market participants will already anticipate the future development of the default rate. This relationship broke down in 2002 for a couple of months due to the large divergence of the “dollar-weighted” from the “issuer-weighted” default rate. As we can see cumulative default rates tend to increase progressively with a decreasing rating class.