Dragons, black swans and decisions

Since Nassim Taleb coined black swan as an event that occurred as a complete surprise for everybody, the metaphor of the black swan has been applied to a much wider variety of events. Black swan events now comprise events that are a surprise for some but not for others, events that have a low likelihood, events that were not believed to be...

Bankruptcy by catastrophes for major multi-nationals: Stock exchange sensitivity for three catastrophes

This paper investigates the effect of major catastrophes have on stock exchange values for the major multi-nationals. The paper demonstrates that the Sharpe analysis is more sensitive in identifying effects than just following the daily stock values for assessing market response. It was found that major multi-nationals are capable of absorbing...

Modelling risk in high hazard operations: Integrating technical, organisational and cultural factors

Recent disasters in high hazard industries such as Oil and Gas Exploration (The Deepwater Horizon) and Petrochemical production (Texas City) have been found to have causes that range from direct technical failures through organizational shortcomings right up to weak regulation and inappropriate company cultures. Risk models have generally...