Profile

Qualifications

BA(Hons), Nottingham
PhD, Nottingham

FICM

 

Experience

Professor Nicholas Wilson has held the Chair in Credit Management and Finance at Leeds University Business School since 1998 and is Director of the Credit Management Research Centre (CMRC). He is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Credit Management (FICM). Professor Wilson gained a BA honours degree in Industrial Economics from the University of Nottingham and completed a Phd at the same institution. He was appointed as a Research Fellow at the WissenschaftsZentrum Berlin (WZB Industrial Policy Unit) in 1980. Professor Wilson was appointed to a lectureship in Applied Economics at the University of Bradford in 1984 and was appointed to the first Chair in Credit Management in July 1993, establishing the Credit Management Research Group. In 1998 the ICM Chair and the Credit Management Research Centre moved to the University of Leeds with £400,000 of commercial sponsorship. He is currently Director of Research for the Accounting and Finance Division of the School and represents A&F on the Schools Research Committee.

Professor Wilson has held visiting academic, lecturing and research positions at the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, The European University in Florence, The Dauer Institute, Sao Paulo, Brazil, The University of Mauritius and the China-EC Management Institute, Beijing, China. In 1989 he taught Decision Sciences in Beijing MBA programme. He is Visiting Professor at the National University of Economics, Bratislava. He has acted as external examiner for the University of Nottingham, University of Wales (Overseas Programmes in Cyprus and Spain), University of Huddersfield, University of Lancaster, Dublin Institute of Technology, the University of Mauritius and The University of Loughborough. He has examined over 20 Phd theses at UK and Overseas Universities. His teaching at Leeds covers: Credit Risk and Credit Management (Masters, Phd); Financial Econometrics (Masters, Phd); Research Methods (Phd) and Current Issues in Finance (Undergraduate). He has acted on Editorial Boards of a number of leading journals and edited Special Issues.

Professor Wilson’s work combines academic rigour with practical and policy relevance. Professor Wilson sat on the Better Payment Practice Group (1997-2007). He provided analysis to BIS and Ministers on the impact of legislation (The Late payment of Commercial Debts Interest Act, 1998) and other interventions aimed at improving trade credit payment behaviour towards small firms. BIS commissioned him, to write a policy report: An Investigation into Payment Trends and Behaviour 1997-2007, published in 2008. Professor Wilson has acted as a consultant on issues of credit and debt management, credit scoring and modelling and policy for major organisations in the financial services, corporate sector and government. He has acted as a consultant for the National Audit Office, Office of Fair Trading, Department of Trade and Industry, The Stationery Office (Insolvency Firecasting) and UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR) amongst others. He has competed a series of commissioned reports on debt management and collection in the government sector (e.g. HMRC, The Redundancy Payment Service and the Criminal Justice System). The work on the HMRC collections and recovery systems was reported in a series of NAO reports and recommendations. He has completed other consultancy projects on diverse subjects such as; advertising and competition policy (OFT); labour demand and training in the Museums sector; advertising on BBC radio (Peacock Inquiry). He produced a report for Business Environment and Regulatory Reform (now BIS) on an evaluation of late payment legislation in the UK. He was appointed to a Government ‘Expert Working Group’ on consumer credit information in 2008. A series of reports for the Welsh Assembly was produced in 2010-2013 on SME performance in Wales and on growth firms in Wales and the regions. He was a panel member for the Independent Commission on Banking’s public forum in Leeds, November 2010. He was on the Expert Economists sub-panel of the Breedon Task Force 2012 which was commissioned to “examine structural and behavioural barriers to the development of alternative debt markets in the UK” in advance of the 2012 Budget. His work on board composition and female directorships was cited in the recent Davies Report, ‘Women on Boards” (BIS, 2011) and reported in the international press. Joint work with Imperial College (Professor Mike Wright) on Private Equity and Venture Capital Investments has been published in leading academic journals and has been widely reported in the international business press (e.g. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Dow Jones, Thomson Reuters, Economist). His collaborative work with the financial services industry was recognised in 2007 by a national award for work on ‘Knowledge Transfer’ from the Economic and Social Research Council. He was awarded a University of Leeds certificate of Outstanding Achievement for “Academic Excellence in Enterprise and Knowledge Transfer” in 2006. He was listed in Credit Today Magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people in the Credit Industry in 2008.

Professor Wilson’s early career was as an applied economist. His work at the WZB involved modelling multivariate times series and macroeconomic forecasting, modelling the impact of advertising at macro and micro levels, modelling labour demand and investigating the impact of internal organisation, participation and profit-sharing on the productivity performance of British and German companies. He was appointed senior Research Fellow at the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick in 1983 to work on an ESRC funded study of productivity performance in British and German Manufacturing with Professor John Cable. This work led to publications in international journals including the Economic Journal and Industrial and Labor Relations Review and collaboration with the London School of Economics, Centre for Economic Performance. Since taking up the Chair Management and Finance his academic work has focussed on corporate finance and corporate risk including studies of Private Equity and leveraged buyouts, bankruptcy prediction, board dynamics and gender, family business, trade credit, financial and working capital management, credit management practice, credit scoring and modelling, and new statistical and econometric methodologies for credit risk modelling. His work combines academic rigour with practitioner and policy relevance. He has, as a result, published widely in academic journals, government policy documents and the business press. He has published over 70 papers in leading academic journals in economics, finance, labour relations, marketing and business forecasting including: Economic Journal, Journal of Banking and Finance, Managerial and Decision Economics, Small Business Economics, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Journal of Market Research, International Business Review, Journal of Credit Risk, Journal of Corporate Finance, Business History, International Small Business Journal, Journal of Operations Research Society. He has over 2000 citations as listed in Google Scholar.

Professor Wilson has been active in raising research funds from the research councils and commercial sponsors. He has been awarded a number of ESRC grants and Knowledge Transfer Partnership awards. Recent awards include: The Welsh Assembly (2010-13); Rake Fund, ISBE (2011); British Venture capital Associations (2011). The Credit Management Research Centre (CMRC) received over £900,000 in commercial sponsorship 1993-2008. CMRC has produced many industry reports including: the Credit Management Quarterly Review, The Atradius Export Survey, the Euler Hermes Survey of European Businesses, the CSA survey of Debt Management and Collection and a regular survey of SME’s in the UK. The Credit Management Research Centre have developed and maintained ‘www. PaymentScorer.com’ to monitor the payment behaviour of UK Plc’s until 2009. CMRC’s work is regularly referred to in government publications, the House of Commons (Hansard) and the International Press, TV and Radio. Professor Wilson has presented keynote speeches, papers and seminars at Credit Conferences across Europe, the US, South America, Australia and the Far East.

In September 2001 Professor Wilson set up CreditScorer Ltd, a Leeds University spin-out company. CreditScorer Ltd was established with funding from the White Rose Innovation Fund (£250,000) and houses a credit reference database for the population of UK businesses. The company received a second round investment of £1,000,000 from the Bonnier Group in July 2003 and was acquired by Bisnode in 2007. The company has developed an on-line benchmarking and risk management service for businesses (CreditScorer.com; RiskScorer.com), the Utilities sector (UtilityScorer.com) and a debt pricing service for the debt sale and purchase market (Debtpricer.com). Professor Wilson has developed alogorithms that generate real time risk scores and default probabilities (PDs) for the population of UK Companies and Small Businesses and on-line portfolio management facilities. CreditScorer built commercial risk scores for the credit agency ICC Ltd (part of the Bisnode Group) and Basel II compliant risk management systems for major banks.

Research

His current research includes: private equity portfolio company performance; growth companies; family business; trade credit: theory and empirical analysis; credit management practice; corporate distress and failure prediction modelling; small firm working capital management and relationships with the banks; applications of neural network simulation in credit and financial management, and business forecasting and market modelling techniques. His work has been published widely in academic journals covering economic, finance and business.


 

Teaching

Corporate Finance
Credit Management
Credit Risk Modelling and Scoring
Business Economics

Student Feedback

• 'Professor Nick is one of the most organised lecturers I have ever seen. His lectures were very engaging'
• 'The module gave us an excellent exposure to credit management and scoring models'
• 'I have found this course very stimulating'

Publications

REF ASSESSMENT (2008 - 2013)

Refereed Papers Published or Early View (DOI)

The value of non-financial information in small and medium-sized enterprise risk management (with E Altman and G Sabato), 2010,The Journal of Credit Risk Vol 6. No. 2

Private Equity Portfolio Company Performance During The Global Recession (with M Wright, D Siegel and L Scholes) Journal of Corporate Finance, 2012, 18, 193-205 (3*)

Company Failure Prediction with Limited Information: Newly Incorporated Companies, (With A Altanlar), Journal of the Operations Research Society, 2013 (3*) DOI

Financial Distress and Bankruptcy Prediction amongst Listed Companies using Accounting, Market and Macroeconomic Variables (with Mario Hernandez), International Review of Financial Analysis, 2013 (3*) DOI

The Survival of Newly Incorporated Companies and the Impact of Director Characteristics (with A Altanlar), second revision, International Journal of Small Business, 2013 (3*) DOI

Family Business Survival and the Role of Boards (with L Scholes and M Wright), Presented to ‘Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice’, Special Issue Conference, May 2012. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2013 (4*)

The evolution of private equity: corporate restructuring in the UK, c.1950-2010 (with S Toms and M Wright), under review for Special Issue, Business History, 2013 (4*)

Effects of Alternative Investments on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Growth, Managerial and Decision Economics Special Issue (Editor, with D Siegel, P Klein and M Wright), 2013

Buyouts Private Equity and Insolvency Risk (with M Wright), Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Revised and Resubmitted. (3*)

Financial Restructuring and Recovery in Private Equity Buyouts: The UK Evidence (with M Wright and R Cressy), Venture Capital: An International Journal, Under Review

Sovereign Credit Rating and the New EU member States, (with M Kacer and P Ochotnicky) Journal of Credit Risk, Under Review

The Rating Decision and the Determinants of Credit Ratings: An Empirical Investigation (with E Gonis and S Paul), European Journal of Finance, Under Review (3*)

Reports and Monographs

Past, Present and Future: The Comparative Performance and Sustainability of High Growth Firms in Wales and the UK Regions, Report Prepared for the Economics Division, Welsh Government, February 2013 (with P Evans, A Mayer and B Ip)

A Covenient Truth: Private Equity and Portfolio Company Growth (with Mike Wright), British Venture Capital Association, January 2013.

Private Equity Portfolio Company Performance Through Time (with M Wright), British Venture Capital Association, March 2012.

Private Equity and Insolvency (with Mike Wright and Robert Cressey), British Venture Capital Association, March 2010.

Private Equity Performance During Recession (with Mike Wright and Louise Scholes), British Venture Capital Association, March 2011

A Longitudinal Analysis of Business Performance, Financial Health and Growth Potential of SMEs in Wales”, (with P Evans and A Altanlar), Welsh Assembly, February 2010

An Investigation into Payment Trends and Behaviour 1997-2007, Policy Report published by BIS (2008)

Equity Gap in the UK Venture Capital Industry, (with M Wright), Report for the National Endowment for Science, Technology and Arts (NESTA). June 2011.

The Performance and Characteristics of Family Firms in the UK, 2006-2011, with Mike Wright and Louise Scholes, Institute for Family Business, February 2011

Conference Presentations

The Suvival of New Companies and Founding Director Characteristics, International Small Business Conference (ISBE), Dublin, November 2012.

Private Equity Performance Through Time, Paper presented to the Private Equity Forum, HEC, Paris June 4-5, 2012.

Heterogeneity, Complexity and Performance in Family Firms (with L Scholes and M Wright), Presented to ‘Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice’, Special Issue Conference, University of Alberta, Edmonton, May 2012.

Private Equity Portfolio Company Performance During The Global Recession (with M Wright, D Siegel and L Scholes) New York, May 2011, Special Issue Conference, JCF

Private Equity, Buyouts, Leverage and Failure. Paper presented at a London Business School conference 'Private Equity at the Cross Roads' Conference on June 5th 2009

Private Equity, Buyouts, Leverage and Failure. Paper presented at ESSEC conference, Paris, June 2010

Credit Crisis and Lending Decisions in the UK, Leeds Financial Services Initiative Conference, Ventura, Leeds, March 2009

Non-Financial Information and SME Risk Assessment (with Ed Altman), Paper presented at the Risk Management Conference, Venice, June 2009; Paper presented at the European Financial Management Association Conference, Milan July 2009; Paper presented at the 'Credit Scoring and Control Conference X1' Edinburgh, August 2009; Paper presented at the Financial Management Association Conference, Reno Nevada (October)

Failure Prediction for Non-Listed Companies. Seminar, University of Innsbruck, February 2009

Key note Speeches on Private Equity and Company Risk ‘Die Welt’ Conference on Private Equity, Frankfurt, January 2009;

Origins of the Financial Crisis, University of Economics, Bratislava, November 2009

Corporate Insolvency Risk Models, CCR- i Conference, London October 2009

Director Characteristics and the Risks of New Companies, CCR- i Conference, London October 2010

A Longitudinal Analysis of Business Performance, Financial Health and Growth Potential of SMEs in Wales”, (with P Evans and A Altanlar), Paper presented to Regional Studies Association Annual International Conference, "Regional Responses and Global Shifts: Actors, Institutions and Organisations" May 2010, Pécs, Southern Hungary

Corporate Insolvency Risk in the UK: Micro and Macro Models. Presentation to Bank of England Financial Stability and Risk Division, April 2010

Gender Specific Attitudes to Risk: Evidence from Corporate Insolvency. Presentation to the Women-in-Insurance Network, Surrey, January 2010

Ownership, Governance and Insolvency Risk, CCR- i Conference, London October 2010

Private Equity Portfolio Performance During the Global Recession, JCF Special Issue Conference on the Financial and Real Effects of Alternative Investments, New York, May 2011.

Appointments and Impact Evidence

2008–2009 Member of Government Expert Working Group on the Sharing of

Consumer Credit Information

2010 Panel Member Independent Commission on Banking Public Forum,

Leeds

2012 Appointed to the “expert economists’ sub-panel of the ‘Breedon Task

Force’ which was commissioned by the government to “examine structural and behavioural barriers to the development of alternative debt markets in the UK” in advance of the 2012 Budget

Research on Buy-Outs and Private Equity

Reported in 'Die Welt' January 21st 2009; Reported in Financial Times ,'Private Equity Deals are Not Riskier' July 5th 2009; Reported in New York Times, 'No Better, or Worse' July 7th 2009; Private Equity Risk, Economist 9th July 2009

PE and Insolvency, Financial Times (Lex); 03/05/2010 BVCA Responds to Report 08/04/2010; Private Equity and Insolvency Financial Times 08/04/2010; Buyout Failures and Private Equity Yorkshire Post 08/04/2010. Fortune, November 2012 http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/11/27/private-equity-debt/. CNBC, November 2012

Research on Governance and Gender

Reported in The Times, 'Women in the boardroom help companies succeed'

March 19th 2009; Women in Emerging Economies, Sunday Times 14/03/2010;

Women Bosses, Daily Mail 07/12/09; Top 50 Business Women, Financial Times, 25th September 2009; Women Directors, Guardian 15th September 2009; Women in the Boardroom and insolvency risk, Times 19/03/09

Feature Article in 'Edge - Institute of Leadership and Management' Magazine,

'Balancing the Board' Pages 36-41, July 2009. Feature Article in 'Professional Manager' - The Chartered Institute of Management Magazine, October, 2009. Keynote speech in Thessaloniki, March 2011.

Research Cited in the ‘Davies Report’ 2011.

Research on Trade Credit and Payment Behaviour

Late Payment and Small Business, Financial Times, September 3rd, 2009

Britain’s Under-Siege Economy , Yorkshire Post, August 2009; Rise in Legal Action on Unpaid Bills, Financial Times 2/12/08; Payment League, Financial Times 22/11/08; If recession doesn’t get you, bombed-out banks and overdue invoices will, Observer 26/10/08; Accounts not receivable, The Economist

Research on Insolvency Risk and Forecasting

Reported in the Daily Telegraph, 'Business Failures Surge' 5th February 200; Reported in the Financial Times, 'Rise in Legal Action' 2nd December 2008; Reported in the Yorkshire Post, ' The Science of Business', 27th January 2009; Reported in the Guardian, 'Job Losses' 19th January 20; Reported in Yorkshire Post; Insolvencies ‘to rise 20pc’ as number of court cases over unpaid bills soars, Daily Telegraph; Small companies face cash squeeze; Financial Times; Forecast of rise in company insolvency cases, Financial Times. CNBC, November 2012. http://www.cnbc.com/id/49928721

JOURNAL PAPERS TO 2007

The determinants of trade credit demand: survey evidence and empirical analysis (with S Paul) , Journal of Accounting, Business and Management (2007) 14: 96-116

Trade Credit Supply: An Empirical Investigation of Company Level Data, (with S Paul) Journal of Accounting, Business and Management (2006) 13:

Disequilibrium in the UK Corporate Loan Market (with CV Atanasova), Journal of Banking and Finance, Vol 28 Issue 3 pp 595-614, 2004

Value Gains on Flotation and IPO Underpricing (with Paula Hill), Journal of Business Finance and Accounting ,Vol 33 Issue 9-10 pp1435-1459, 2006

Small Firm Finance: An Empirical Investigation of the Pecking Order Hypothesis (with R Watson), Journal of Business Finance and Accounting Vol 29, (2002)

Trade Credit Terms Offered by Small Firms: An Empirical Investigation (with B Summers), Journal of Business Finance and Accounting Vol 29 N0 4, (2002)

An Empirical Investigation of Trade Credit Demand (with B Summers) (2002), International Journal of the Economics of Business Vol 9, No 2 pp 257-270

Borrowing Constraints and the Demand for Trade Credit: Evidence from Panel Data (with CV Atanasova), Managerial and Decision Economics Vol 24, Issue 6-7, 2003

An Examination of the factors Associated with Bank Switching in the UK Small Firm Sector (With C Howorth and MJ Peel), Small Business Economics Vol 20 No 4 pp 305-317 (2003)

Trade Credit and Customer Relationships (with B Summers), Managerial and Decision Economics, Vol 24, Issue 6-7, (2003)

Corporate Failure Rates and the Impact of the 1986 Insolvency Act: An Econometric Analysis ( with J Lieu), Managerial Finance (2002) Vol 28, No 6, pp 61-71

The Separation of Ownership from Control and the Modelling of Directors Pay Decisions in UK SMEs: an empirical analysis (with R Watson), Small Business Economics Vol 24 pp 465-476, 2005

Participation and Productivity: A Stochastic Frontier Approach. (with A Robinson) , Economic and Industrial Democracy , Vol 27 No 4 pp 609-636, 2006

Profit-Sharing and Productivity: An Analysis of UK Engineering Firms (with J.R. Cable) Economic Journal, 1989, vol 99 No 396.pp 366-76

Profit-Sharing and Productivity: Some Further Evidence (with J.R. Cable) Economic Journal, 1990, vol 100 No 399.pp 550-63)

Quit Rates, the Impact of Participation Profit-Sharing and Unionisation: Empirical Evidence from UK Engineering Firms (with J.R.Cable and M.J.Peel) British Journal of Industrial Relations, 1990 vol 28 No 2, July, pp 197-213

The Impact on Absenteeism and Quits of Profit-Sharing and Other Forms of Employee Participation. (With M.J.Peel) Industrial and Labor Relations Review, April 1991, Vol 44 No 3 (18 pages)

Unionisation, Wages and Productivity: Some UK Evidence (with J.R.Cable) Applied Economics, 1991, January 1991. Vol 23 pp 219-227

Some Evidence on Discriminating between Failing and Distressed Acquired Firms in the UK Corporate Sector (With M.J.Peel) Managerial and Decision Economics, 1989,Vol 10 No 3 pp 209-221

Modelling the Effects of Advertising: Some Methodological Issues (with G.J Hooley)Journal of the Market Research Society, 1988, Vol 30, No 1.pp 45-58

Modelling the Effects of Advertising: Further Methodological Issues (with G.J Hooley) Journal of the Market Research Society 1988, Vol 30, No 2.

Advertising Expenditure and Aggregate Consumption in Britain and West Germany: An Analysis of Causality. Managerial and Decision Economics, 1984 Vol 5, No 4. pp 290-306

Forecasting Advertising Expenditure (With B.T. Sturgess) International Journal of Advertising, 1983, Vol 2. pp 301-316

Worker Cooperatives and the Promotion of Cooperative Development in Britain (With J.Coyne) Industrial Relations Journal, March 1981 pp 30-45

The Impact of Profit-Sharing, Voice and Participation on Labour Absenteeism (With M.J. Peel) International Journal of Manpower, 1990 Vol 11 Number 7 pp 17-25

Emerging Forms of Organisation and Ownership in Europe (with H Mirza) International Business Review Vol 2 No 3, 1993 pp221-222

Comparative Performance of Cooperative and Private Companies: An Empirical Investigation (with A Robinson) International Business Review Vol 2 No 3, 1993 pp281-296

Forecasting International Tourism Flows Using Quarterly Data (With C Witt and S Witt) Annals of Tourism Research, 1994 Vol 21 No 3

Restructuring and Failure in Buy-outs and Buy-ins (with M Wright and K Robbie) Business Strategy Review, Summer 1994, Issue 2 Vol 5 pp 21-40

Advertising, Barriers to Entry and Competition Policy (with C Pass and B Sturgess) Journal of Product and Brand Management, Vol 3 No 3 1994

Neural Network Simulation and the Prediction of Corporate Outcomes: Some Empirical Findings (with K S Chong and M J Peel) International Journal of the Economics of Business Vol 2, No 1, pp31-50, 1995

The Impact of ESOPs on Employee Participation and Industrial Democracy (with A Pendleton, A Robinson, J McDonald) Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 5, No 4 1995 p 44-6

An Analysis of Management Buy-out Failures (with M Wright, K Robbie C Ennew) Managerial and Decision Economics, Vol 17, pp57-70, 1996

Does Employee Ownership Weaken Trade Unions ? Recent Evidence from the UK Bus Industry (with A Pendleton, A Robinson and J McDonald) Economic and Industrial Democracy August 1995, Vol 16 pp 577-605

Working Capital and Capital Budgeting Practices in the Small Firm Sector (with M J Peel) International Small Business Journal Vol 14 No 2, Issue 54, pp52-68 1996

Employee Participation and Corporate Governance in Employee-Owned Firms (with A Pendleton et al) Work, Employment and Society , Vol 10, No 2, pp205-226, 1996

Do small businesses have to practice marketing to survive and grow (with S Hogarth-Scott and K Watson) Marketing Intelligence and Planning, Vol 14 No 1, 1996 p5-17

The Perception and Effects of ‘Ownership’ in Employee Buy-Outs: Some Empirical Evidence (with A Pendleton and M Wright) British Journal of Industrial Relations 1998, Vol 36 No 1 p99-123

The Longer Term Effects of Management-Led Buy-Outs (with M Wright and K Robbie) Journal of Entrepreneurial and Small Business Finance , 1998, 5(1) p213-23

Profit-Sharing in OECD Countries: A Review and Some Evidence (with S Estrin, V Perotin,and A Robinson), Business Strategy Review, 1997 Vol 8, Issue 4, p27-32

Small Business Start-ups: Success Factors and Support Implications (with K Watson and S Hogarth-Scott) International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research Vol 4 No 3 1998 p217-238

Using Neural Networks for Credit Risk Management (with B Summers)Journal of Credit Management, Issue 1, pp 4-10, 1998

Trade Credit Management and the Decision to Use Factoring (withB Summers) Journal of Business Finance and Accounting Vol 27 No 1 2000

Late Payment and Credit Management in the Small Firm Sector: Some Empirical Evidence (with M J Peel and C Howorth) International Journal of Small Business, Vol 18 No 2 February 2000

Late Payment and the Small Firm: An Examination of case studies (with C Howorth) Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development Vol 5 No 4 1999

Predicting Corporate Failure and Payment Behaviour (With B Summers and R S Hope) International Journal of the Economics of Business Vol 7 No 3 2000pp 333-346

Trade Credit: A Strategic Tool ? The Journal of Risk Finance Vol 7 No 3 1999