Predicting financial distress of companies: revisiting the Z-Score and ZETA® models

Abstract

This paper is adapted and updated from E. Altman, "Financial Ratios, Discriminant Analysis and the Prediction of Corporate Bankruptcy," Journal of Finance, September 1968; and E. Altman, R. Haldeman and P. Narayanan, "Zeta Analysis: A New Model to Identify Bankruptcy Risk of Corporations," Journal of Banking & Finance, 1, 1977. Predicting Financial Distress of Companies: Revisiting the Z-Score and ZETA Models Background This paper discusses two of the venerable models for assessing the distress of industrial corporations. These are the so-called Z-Score model (1968) and ZETA 1977) credit risk model. Both models are still being used by practitioners throughout the world. The latter is a proprietary model for subscribers to ZETA Services, Inc. (Hoboken, NJ). The purpose of this summary are two-fold. First, those unique characteristics of business failures are examined in order to specify and quantify the variables which are effective indicators and predictors of corporate distress. By doing so, I hope to highlight the analytic as well as the practical value inherent in the use of financial ratios. Specifically, a set of financial and economic ratios will be analyzed in a corporate distress prediction context using a multiple discriminant statistical methodology. Through this exercise, I will explore not only the quantifiable characteristics of potential bankrupts but also the utility of a much-maligned technique of financial analysis: ratio analysis. Although the models that we will discuss were developed in the late 1960's and mid-1970's, I will extend our tests and findings to include application to firms not traded publicly, to non-manufacturing entities, and also refer to a new bond-rating equivalent model for emerging markets corporate bonds. The latter util...