Ronan Gallagher

Unfunded Pension Liabilities and the Corporate CDS Market

This article examines the impact of pension deficits on default risk as measured by the premia on corporate credit default swaps (CDS). We find highly significant evidence that unfunded pension liabilities raise one- and five-year CDS premia. However, this relation is not homogeneous across countries, with the U.S. CDS market leading its European counterparts in the pricing of defined-benefit pension risk.

Unfunded pension liabilities and sponsoring firm credit risk: an international analysis of corporate bond spreads

This paper tests empirically whether pension information derived by corporate pension accounting disclosures is priced in corporate bond spreads. The model represents a hybrid of more traditional accounting ratio-based models of credit risk and structural models of bond spreads initiated by Merton (1974). The model is fitted to 5 years of data from 2002 to 2006 featuring companies from the US and Europe. The paper finds that while unfunded pension liabilities are priced in the overall sample, they are not priced as aggressively as traditional leverage. Furthermore, an extended model shows that the pension–credit risk relation is most evident in the US and Germany, where unfunded pension liabilities are priced more aggressively than traditional forms of leverage. No pension–credit risk relation is found in the other countries sampled, notably the UK, Netherlands and France.

Regulatory Own Goals? The Unintended Consequences of Economic Regulation in Professional Football

Research question: In 2010, the governing body of European football, UEFA, approved “Financial Fair Play�? regulations. Designed to encourage financial discipline, promote stability and foster competitive balance, they focus on a financial breakeven constraint. We analyse the impact of such constraints on the joint sporting and financial efficiency of English football clubs. Research methods: The simultaneous production of both sporting and financial outputs are modelled using stochastic, non-parametric efficiency analysis. The sample is an unbalanced panel representing 60 clubs spanning the 2003/2004 to 2016/2017 seasons. Results and Findings: The Financial Fair Play breakeven regulation reduces average club efficiency, raises the relative importance of financial goals (capturing revenue share) whilst lowering the relative importance of sporting goals (capturing point share). The efficiency costs of regulation are not borne equally by clubs. Implications: Breakeven regulations reduce the joint sporting and financial efficiency of regulated clubs, with the efficiency loss positively related to the severity of the breakeven constraint. The Financial Fair Play regulations further entrench the financial and sporting power of elite clubs and potentially undermine league competitive intensity by shifting the relative focus of clubs away from sporting productivity toward financial productivity.