Predicting Corporate Financial Distress in Sri Lanka With Reference to Z-Score Model

Abstract

Financial Distress is a problem spread all over the world from the history. Even though there are ample research studies on this area, the empirical results on this area provide inconclusive results. The majority of the research works focused only on the bankruptcy and not on the financial distress. Hence, the main purpose of this study is to develop a better financial distress prediction model for Sri Lankan companies using the Z-score model. Multivariate Discriminate Analysis (MDA) was used as the analytical technique and simultaneous estimation method has used to enter the variables in the analysis. The study has examined four accounting ratios for 134 distressed and non-distressed companies from 2002 to 2011. The study has found that the derived model which consists of four accounting ratios is capable of predicting financial distress of quoted public companies in Sri Lanka with 76.9% accurate one year prior to distress. Further, the model has the financial distress predicting ability of 74.6% and 67.2% two years and three years prior to distress respectively. This model can be used to assist investors, creditors, managers, auditors and regulatory bodies in Sri Lanka to predict the financial distress