The study presents a comprehensive approach to examining the potential risk of bankruptcies in financial sector organizations. This investigation explores 20 financial sector entities and evaluates their fiscal history from 2000 to 2018. The developed model assesses the chance of these companies going bankrupt by analyzing indicators like liquidity, profitability, debt composition, and operational effectiveness. These metrics are contrasted to regulatory requirements and assessed as having low, moderate, or elevated risk repercussions, ultimately contributing to an overall threat rating. Additionally, the model has a unique algorithm that compensates for excessive debt levels, strengthening the reliability of the risk appraisal grade. This straightforward instrument illustrates the demand to incorporate a variety of financial health indicators. According to the findings, excessive amounts of debt have a detrimental influence on profitability, leading to decreased stock returns and a greater probability of bankruptcy. These findings have practical implications for investors and stakeholders, providing insightful information to help inform decision-making, especially during periods of economic unpredictability such as pandemics. Furthermore, they encourage the enhancement of financial market efficiency.

It is generally argued that Islamic banks are safer than conventional banks. The prime reason is that their product structure is essentially asset-backed financing, while conventional banks rely heavily on leveraging, which was considered one of the main causes of the 2008 global financial crisis. This paper examines the riskiness of Islamic and conventional banks during the 2008 global crisis by measuring overleveraging, defined as the difference between actual and optimal debt. This research conducted empirical analysis on the overleveraging of 20 banks (10 conventional and 10 Islamic banks) from five different countries, namely, Bahrain, Kuwait, Malaysia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The analysis is double-folded: on the one hand, the results in this paper suggest that excess debt, rather than the mere holding of debt, was the reason behind the severe financial meltdown in 2007–2009; on the other hand, this paper shows that Islamic banks, in most of the countries in context, performed better during the recent crisis, but were subject to the second-round effect of the global crisis around the years of 2011–2013.

This paper addresses if and how excess debt can be considered as an early warning signal for banks and takes an additional dimension by comparing the excess leverage between Islamic and conventional banks in Indonesia before, during, and after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). To do so, this research develops an empirical model of banks’ capital structure and optimal and excess debt, and it conducts an empirical analysis on the overleveraging of eleven conventional and Islamic banks in Indonesia. Results show that all banks became vulnerable to the GFC in 2007–2009 while credit build-up, i.e., overleveraging, started in 2005. However, for most of the banks in the sample, Islamic banks performed better and leveraged less prior to the GFC, which made them more resilient to the crisis.

This paper applies an empirical model of corporate capital structure, optimal debt, and overleveraging to estimate overleveraging measured as the difference between actual and optimal debt. Estimated using a sample of the twenty largest pharmaceutical firms, covering the time span from 2000 to 2018, the model sheds light on an industry-specific default risk. The analysis presented in this paper reveals a concerning trend in the pharmaceutical industry, with corporate excess debt steadily increasing over the past two decades, particularly peaking during the 2008 crisis and after 2013. These findings underscore the critical role of excess debt in exacerbating financial instability and highlight the pharmaceutical sector’s unique challenges, including high R&D intensity and regulatory pressures. By quantifying overleveraging and linking it to financial risk, the paper offers valuable policy implications, emphasizing the need for proactive management of optimal debt levels to mitigate default risks and enhance macroeconomic resilience.