文献出处：Sharifi, Omid. International Journal of Information, Business and Management 6.2 (May 2014): 82-94.2014年，最新文献翻译，译文3000多字原文Financial Risk Management for Small and Medium SizedEnterprises(SMES)Omid SharifiMBA, Department of Commerce and Business Management,Kakatiya University, House No. 2-1-664, Sarawathi negar,Gopalpur, Hanamakonda, A.P., IndiaE-Mail: **********************, Phone: 0091- 8808173339RESEARCH QUESTIONRisk and economic activity are inseparable. Every business decision and entrepreneurial act is connected with risk. This applies also to business of small and medium sized enterprises as they are also facing several and often the same risks as bigger companies. In a real business environment with market imperfections they need to manage those risks in order to secure their business continuity and add additional value by avoiding or reducing transaction costs and cost of financial distress or bankruptcy. However, risk management is a challenge for most SME. In contrast to larger companies they often lack the necessary resources, with regard to manpower, databases and specialty of knowledge to perform a standardized and structured risk management. The result is that many smaller companies do not perform sufficient analysis to identify their risk. This aspect is exacerbated due to a lack in literature about methods for risk management in SME, as stated by Henschel: The two challenging aspects with regard to risk management in SME are therefore:1. SME differ from large corporations in many characteristics2. The existing research lacks a focus on risk management in SMEThe following research question will be central to this work:1.how can SME manage their internal financial risk?2.Which aspects, based on their characteristics, have to be taken into account for this?3.Which mean fulfils the requirements and can be applied to SME? LITERATURE REVIEWIn contrast to larger corporations, in SME one of the owners is often part of the management team. His intuition and experience are important for managing the company.Therefore, in small companies, the (owner-) manager is often responsible for many different tasks and important decisions. Most SME do not have the necessary resources to employ specialists on every position in the company. They focus on their core business and have generalists for the administrative functions. Behr and Guttler find that SME on average have equity ratios lower than 20%. The different characteristics of management, position on procurement and capital markets and the legal framework need to be taken into account when applying management instruments like risk management. Therefore the risk management techniques of larger corporations cannot easily be applied to SME.In practice it can therefore be observed that although SME are not facing less risks and uncertainties than large companies, their risk management differs from the practices in larger companies. The latter have the resources to employ a risk manager and a professional, structured and standardized risk management system. In contrast to that, risk management in SME differs in the degree of implementation and the techniques applied. Jonen & Simgen-Weber With regard to firm size and the use of risk management. Beyer, Hachmeister & Lampenius observe in a study from 2010 that increasing firm size among SME enhances the use of risk management. This observation matches with the opinion of nearly 10% of SME, which are of the opinion, that risk management is only reasonable in larger corporations. Beyer,Hachmeister & Lampenius find that most of the surveyed SME identify risks with help of statistics, checklists, creativity and scenario analyses. reveals similar findings and state that most companies rely on key figure systems for identifying and evaluating the urgency of business risks. That small firms face higher costs of hedging than larger corporations. This fact is reducing the benefits from hedging and therefore he advises to evaluate the usage of hedging for each firm individually. The lacking expertise to decide about hedges in SME is also identified by Eckbo, According to his findings, smaller companies often lack the understanding and management capacities needed to use those instruments.METHODOLOGYUSE OF FINANCIAL ANALYSIS IN SME RISK MANAGEMENTHow financial analysis can be used in SME risk management?Development of financial risk overview for SMEThe following sections show the development of the financial risk overview. After presenting the framework, the different ratios will be discussed to finally present a selection of suitable ratios and choose appropriate comparison data. Framework for financial risk overviewThe idea is to use a set of ratios in an overview as the basis for the financial risk management.This provides even more information than the analysis of historical data and allows reacting fast on critical developments and managing the identified risks. However not only the internal data can be used for the risk management. In addition to that also the information available in the papers can be used.Some of them state average values for the defaulted or bankrupt companies one year prior bankruptcy -and few papers also for a longer time horizon. Those values can be used as a comparison value to evaluate the risk situation of the company. For this an appropriate set of ratios has to be chosen.The ratios, which will be included in the overview and analysis sheet, should fulfill two main requirements. First of all they should match the main financial risks of the company in order to deliver significant information and not miss an importantrisk factor. Secondly the ratios need to be relevant in two different ways. On the one hand they should be applicable independently of other ratios. This means that they also deliver useful information when not used in a regression, as it is applied in many of the papers. On the other hand to be appropriate to use them, the ratios need to show a different development for healthy companies than for those under financial distress. The difference between the values of the two groups should be large enough to see into which the observed company belongs.Evaluation of ratios for financial risk overviewWhen choosing ratios from the different categories, it needs to be evaluated which ones are the most appropriate ones. For this some comparison values are needed in order to see whether the ratios show different values and developments for the two groups of companies. The most convenient source for the comparison values are the research papers as their values are based on large samples of annual reports and by providing average values outweigh outliers in the data. Altman shows a table with the values for 8 different ratios for the five years prior bankruptcy of which he uses 5, while Porporato & Sandin use 13 ratios in their model and Ohlson bases his evaluation on 9 figures and ratios [10]. Khong, Ong & Yap and Cerovac & Ivicic also show the difference in ratios between the two groups, however only directly before bankruptcy and not as a development over time [9]. Therefore this information is not as valuable as the others ([4][15]).In summary, the main internal financial risks in a SME should be covered by financial structure, liquidity and profitability ratios, which are the main categories of ratios applied in the research papers.Financial structureA ratio used in many of the papers is the total debt to total assets ratio, analyzing the financial structure of the company. Next to the papers of Altman, Ohlson and Porporato & Sandin also Khong, Ong & Yap and Cerovac & Ivicic show comparison values for this ratio. Those demonstrate a huge difference in size between the bankrupt and non-bankrupt groups.Figure 1: Development of total debt/ total assets ratioData source: Altman (1968), Porporato & Sandin (2007) and Ohlson (1980), author’s illustrationTherefore the information of total debt/total assets is more reliable and should rather be used for the overview. The other ratios analyzing the financial structure are only used in one of the papers and except for one the reference data only covers the last year before bankruptcy. Therefore a time trend cannot be detected and their relevance cannot be approved.Cost of debtThe costs of debt are another aspect of the financing risk. Porporato & Sandin use the variable interest payments/EBIT for measuring the debt costs. The variable shows how much of the income before tax and interest is spend to finance the debt. This variable also shows a clear trend when firms approach bankruptcy.LiquidityThe ratio used in all five papers to measure liquidity is the current ratio, showing the relation between current liabilities and current assets (with slight differences in the definition). Instead of the current ratio, a liquidity ratio setting the difference between current assets and current liabilities, also defined as working capital, into relation with total assets could be used.Figure 2: Development of working capital / total assets ratioData source: Altman (1968) and Ohlson (1980); author’s illustratioBasically the ratio says whether the firm would be able to pay back all its’ current liabilities by using its’ current assets. In case it is not able to, which is when the liabilities exceed the assets, there is an insolvency risk.ProfitabilityFor measuring the firms’ profitability or productivity a wide range of ratios is used in the different papers. The ratio sales /total assets is used as well by as also Porporato & Sandin (they use total assets / sales, which can easily be transformed to be comparable) and therefore available as a time series.Figure 3: Development of sales / total assets ratioData source: Altman (1968) and Porporato & Sandin (2007), author’s illustratioThe remaining ratios measuring the last period’s profitability are net income / equity, EBIT /debt and net income or EBIT / total assets.The last groups of profitability ratios, which can be found in the literature, are those focusing on retained earnings of the firms. These measures show the cumulated profitability of the firm over time.Retained earnings ratios measure the buffer of funds the company was able to earn over time and which can be used in times of crisis to balance losses.译文中小企业的财务风险管理Omid Sharifi研究问题风险与经济活动是密不可分的。