Serial Defaults, Serial Profits
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This chapter looks at the profitability of banking families. Lending to the king of Spain made good business sense; it was hugely profitable on average, despite periodic defaults and restructurings. Defaults and reschedulings reduced the rate of return, but profitability net of these losses was still high—and markedly higher than the return on alternative investments. The same conclusion emerges from analyzing the profitability of loans by the banking dynasty. Of the sixty families that lent to Philip, only five failed to earn their likely opportunity cost of capital—and these bankers provided only a negligible proportion of the short-term loans taken out by the king. As a consequence, few financiers ever stopped lending to Philip II.
2013 ◽
Vol 4
(03)
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pp. 391-400
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