It shows the number of times short-term liabilities are covered by cash.

Maintaining a balance between short-term assets and short-term liabilities is critical.

These involve managing the relationship between a firm's short-term assets and its short-term liabilities.

Therefore, during periods of market illiquidity, they could go bankrupt if unable to refinance their short-term liabilities.

Others must tidy their portfolios, exchanging short-term liabilities for long-term debt that is less subject to speculative meltdown.

"Venezuela, he said, "may be safer than many think, as its short-term liabilities are greatly exceeded by its assets, both official and private."

Through setting up ABCP conduits, banks can fund assets all by short-term liabilities.

Converting short-term liabilities to long term assets (banks deal with large number of lenders and borrowers, and reconcile their conflicting needs)

As another example, a bank could have substantial long-term assets (such as fixed-rate mortgages) but short-term liabilities, such as deposits.

Of our sample, 35% scored amber for liquidity, which looks at the working capital ratio, indicating whether an authority has enough current assets to cover its short-term liabilities.

Going forward, Mr. Mastroddi wrote, "net corporate bond issuance could well fall, as firms have already replaced a huge amount of short-term liabilities with long-term debt."

Investors have expressed frustration with the limited amount of detail Vivendi has provided in recent weeks, especially about how much cash it has on hand to meet short-term liabilities.

When the long-term positions default, or the short-term interest rate rises too high (or there are simply no lenders), the bank cannot meet its short-term liabilities and goes under.

But unlike the credit arbitrage programs, SIVs do not have explicit agreements with their sponsoring banks for committed back-stop liquidity lines covering all their short-term liabilities.

Mr. Suria based his assessment on the fact that Amazon's working capital - defined as its near-term assets minus its short-term liabilities - would turn negative later this year.

However, maturity mismatches are not confined to the use of short-term liabilities and can exist at any point in the maturity schedule of a nonbank financial company's assets and liabilities.

The major element of investment trusts' asset portfolios is ordinary shares, with UK and overseas ordinary equities accounting for nearly 90 per cent of total assets net of short-term liabilities.

'Other' assets include unit trust units, local authorities mutual investment trust, property unit trusts, loans and mortgages, UK local authorities securities, plus other investments, minus short-term liabilities and long-term borrowing.

On 2 October 2002, the CEO, Thierry Breton was called to turn the company round, since at that time, France Telecom was the 2nd most in debt company worldwide in terms of short-term liabilities.

When the new chief executive, Jean-René Fourtou, took over he immediately issued a statement that warned of Vivendi's perilous financial situation and said that the company would have trouble meeting short-term liabilities if it did not raise emergency financing from its banks.

Given the extremely tough definition DBRS has established for the R-1 (high) category, entities rated R-1 (middle) are also considered strong credits, and typically exemplify above average strength in key areas of consideration for the timely repayment of short-term liabilities.

As a result, the Finance Ministry directed a growing proportion of the assets of savings banks to finance public debentures and private banks' short-term liabilities, with the added result that the policy significantly reduced funds available for agricultural projects and other traditional lending activities.

Paul D. Mastroddi, an economist at the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, wrote in an economic briefing for clients that most of the debt issued in 1991 and in the first quarter of 1992 was sold either to refinance existing debt at lower interest rates or to replace short-term liabilities with long-term debt.

Certain creditors argued that the clause required Sigma's receivers to allocate assets to its short-term liabilities pari passu i.e. equally and without preference; other creditors argued that a 'pay as you go' approach should be adopted with assets allocated according to the dates on which liabilities fell due, starting with the earliest.