In the diploma thesis, I first described risky derivatives. As an example of a catastrophe with risky derivatives, I took the case of Orange County, California. Orange County filed for bankruptcy in December 1994 and lost $1.5 billion in its municipal investment fund. The bankruptcy was immediately linked to a problem with risky derivatives, but in the end, the Orange County disaster turned out to be more related to leverage, poor governance, and relatively large holdings of papers with fixed interest rate.
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