A multicriteria discrimination approach for the credit rating of Asian banksA multicriteria discrimination approach for the credit rating of Asian banks Peer-Reviewed Journal Publication Δημοσίευση σε Περιοδικό με Κριτές 2015-11-182007enIn this paper we develop a multicriteria decision aid model, to investigate whether it is possible to replicate the credit ratings of Fitch on Asian banks using publicly available data. The model is developed with the Multi-group Hierarchical DIScrimination (MHDIS) approach, following a tenfold cross validation procedure. Five financial variables are selected from a list of nineteen ones through factor analysis. An additional set of five non-financial variables covering ownership, corporate governance, auditing, strength of bank’s franchise and its banking environment is also being used. The results show that equity/customer and short term funding, net interest margin and return on average equity are the most important financial variables. The number of shareholders, the number of subsidiaries and the banking environment of the country in which the banks operate are the most important non-financial ones. In terms of classification accuracies, the results show that the MHDIS model can replicate the credit ratings of Fitch with a satisfactory accuracy and is more efficient than discriminant analysis and ordered logistic regression that are used for comparison purposes.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Annals of Finance33351-367 Michael Doumpos Δουμπος Μιχαλης Gaganis, Chrysovalantis Pasiouras Fotios Πασιουρας Φωτιος Springer Verlag Multi-criteria Fitch Credit ratings Asia Banks