Risk Control versus Risk Management in the Context of an Active Management: The Emerging Market Alternative

The regulatory environment to which financial institutions and specially banks are subjected has been evolving over the years. However, global financial sector stability has remained elusive with the global economy experiencing more financial crises in the past decade than the preceding decades. These financial tremors have had their epicenters in the advanced economies triggered by events in the banking industry. Further, economic growth in the developed economies has been very low and sometimes negative with close to 50 percent of the stock market value having been wiped out by the 2007/2008 global financial crisis. Against a backdrop of improved bank supervision and regulation courtesy of the Basel frameworks the Eurozone economies are reeling in recession. On the other hand the emerging and transitional economies have for the past close to a decade and a half showed resilient and outstanding performance with less stringent supervisory regimes enabling commercial banks to earn high profits. The profitability of the industry bolsters investment and recurrent expenditure all of which have the effect of fueling inflation and volatile exchange rates which accelerate economic growth, high interest and lending rates as well as market liquidity. These conditions provide opportunities for arbitrage trading that gives above average returns on investment as exemplified by the trend analysis. The high economic growth comes with attendant high inflation, lending rates and returns on government securities. The study set out to determine whether the high return environment within developing economies provides arbitrage investment opportunities and influences foreign investment by attracting foreign investment participation in government securities trading. The specific objectives were to demonstrate the adverse effects including the systemic vulnerabilities imposed by excess competition occasioned by thorough regulation and to empirically determine whether higher high exchange, lending, Tbill and Tbond rates attract foreign investment to developing economies with focus on Kenyan government securities. The study adopted secondary time series data analysis to establish whether or not lending rates, USD exchange rates, Tbond and Tbill rates affect foreign investment in government securities. The time series data analysis confirmed that in the long run, Tbond, USD exchange and lending rates all significantly influence the foreign investment in Kenya vide the Treasury bonds avenue. Based on these findings we conclude that emerging and transitional economies offer a perfect arbitrage investment opportunity for low return advanced economies.