Implementing a Structural Valuation Model of Swap Credit-Sensitive Rates.

Currency and interest rate swaps are subject to a complex, two-sided default risk. Several theoretical papers have addressed the problem of pricing swap credit risk. I propose a complete implementation procedure of the structural line of research in theoretical credit risk analysis in order to attempt to evaluate an OTC contract such as the swap contract. It is shown how structural models can enable us to extract the whole credit risk information from scarce data if of good quality, which leads to the problem of mixing accounting and available financial data from traded prices. Ther analytical results are therefore benchmarked against actual transaction data. Although the results are not very satisfactory for swap pricing, the procedure provides interesting insights in some parameter estimations linked to the credit worthiness of the firm that show to be consistent indicators, useful for credit risk management purposes.