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Capital Structure
In corporate finance, capital structure refers to the mix of various forms of external funds, known as capital, used to finance a business. It consists of shareholders' equity, debt (borrowed funds), and preferred stock, and is detailed in the company's balance sheet. The larger the debt component is in relation to the other sources of capital, the greater financial leverage (or gearing, in the United Kingdom) the firm is said to have. Too much debt can increase the risk of the company and reduce its financial flexibility, which at some point creates concern among investors and results in a greater cost of capital. Company management is responsible for establishing a capital structure for the corporation that makes optimal use of financial leverage and holds the cost of capital as low as possible. Capital structure is an important issue in setting rates charged to customers by regulated utilities in the United States. The utility company has the right to choose any capital ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corporate Finance
Corporate finance is an area of finance that deals with the sources of funding, and the capital structure of businesses, the actions that managers take to increase the Value investing, value of the firm to the shareholders, and the tools and analysis used to allocate financial resources. The primary goal of corporate finance is to Shareholder value, maximize or increase valuation (finance), shareholder value.SeCorporate Finance: First Principles Aswath Damodaran, New York University's Stern School of Business Correspondingly, corporate finance comprises two main sub-disciplines. Capital budgeting is concerned with the setting of criteria about which value-adding Project#Corporate finance, projects should receive investment funding, and whether to finance that investment with ownership equity, equity or debt capital. Working capital management is the management of the company's monetary funds that deal with the short-term operating balance of current assets and Current liability, cu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Equity (finance)
In finance, equity is an ownership interest in property that may be subject to debts or other liabilities. Equity is measured for accounting purposes by subtracting liabilities from the value of the assets owned. For example, if someone owns a car worth $24,000 and owes $10,000 on the loan used to buy the car, the difference of $14,000 is equity. Equity can apply to a single asset, such as a car or house, or to an entire business. A business that needs to start up or expand its operations can sell its equity in order to raise cash that does not have to be repaid on a set schedule. When liabilities attached to an asset exceed its value, the difference is called a deficit and the asset is informally said to be "underwater" or "upside-down". In government finance or other non-profit settings, equity is known as "net position" or "net assets". Origins The term "equity" describes this type of ownership in English because it was regulated through the system of equity law that devel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor. Bankrupt is not the only legal status that an insolvent person may have, meaning the term ''bankruptcy'' is not a synonym for insolvency. Etymology The word ''bankruptcy'' is derived from Italian language, Italian , literally meaning . The term is often described as having originated in Renaissance Italy, where there allegedly existed the tradition of smashing a banker's bench if he defaulted on payment. However, the existence of such a ritual is doubted. History In Ancient Greece, bankruptcy did not exist. If a man owed and he could not pay, he and his wife, children or servants were forced into "debt slavery" until the creditor recouped losses through their Manual labour, physical labour. Many city-states in ancient Greece lim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transaction Cost
In economics, a transaction cost is a cost incurred when making an economic trade when participating in a market. The idea that transactions form the basis of economic thinking was introduced by the institutional economist John R. Commons in 1931. Oliver E. Williamson's ''Transaction Cost Economics'' article, published in 2008, popularized the concept of transaction costs. Douglass C. North argues that institutions, understood as the set of rules in a society, are key in the determination of transaction costs. In this sense, institutions that facilitate low transaction costs can boost economic growth.North, Douglass C. 1992. "Transaction costs, institutions, and economic performance", San Francisco, CA: ICS Press. Alongside production costs, transaction costs are one of the most significant factors in business operation and management. Definition Williamson defines transaction costs as a cost innate in running an economic system of companies, comprising the total costs of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Information Asymmetry
In contract theory, mechanism design, and economics, an information asymmetry is a situation where one party has more or better information than the other. Information asymmetry creates an imbalance of power in transactions, which can sometimes cause the transactions to be inefficient, causing market failure in the worst case. Examples of this problem are adverse selection, moral hazard,Dembe, Allard E. and Boden, Leslie I. (2000). "Moral Hazard: A Question of Morality?" New Solutions 2000 10(3). 257–79 and monopolies of knowledge. A common way to visualise information asymmetry is with a scale, with one side being the seller and the other the buyer. When the seller has more or better information, the transaction will more likely occur in the seller's favour ("the balance of power has shifted to the seller"). An example of this could be when a used car is sold, the seller is likely to have a much better understanding of the car's condition and hence its market value than the buy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taxes
A tax is a mandatory financial charge or levy imposed on an individual or legal entity by a governmental organization to support government spending and public expenditures collectively or to regulate and reduce negative externalities. Tax compliance refers to policy actions and individual behavior aimed at ensuring that taxpayers are paying the right amount of tax at the right time and securing the correct tax allowances and tax relief. The first known taxation occurred in Ancient Egypt around 3000–2800 BC. Taxes consist of direct or indirect taxes and may be paid in money or as labor equivalent. All countries have a tax system in place to pay for public, common societal, or agreed national needs and for the functions of government. Some countries levy a flat percentage rate of taxation on personal annual income, but most scale taxes are progressive based on brackets of yearly income amounts. Most countries charge a tax on an individual's income and corporate income. Cou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agency Cost
An agency cost is an Economics, economic concept that refers to the costs associated with the relationship between a "Principal (commercial law), principal" (an organization, person or group of persons), and an "Agent (economics), agent". The agent is given powers to make decisions on behalf of the principal. However, the two parties may have different incentives and the agent generally has information asymmetry, more information. The principal cannot directly ensure that its agent is always acting in its (the principal's) best interests.''Pay Without Performance'' by Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried, Harvard University Press 2004preface and introduction This potential divergence in interests is what gives rise to agency costs. Common examples of this cost include: * according to the Friedman doctrine, the cost borne by shareholders (the principals) when Corporate management#Top-level managers, corporate management (the agent) buys other companies to expand its power, or spends mon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bankruptcy Costs
Within the theory of corporate finance, bankruptcy costs of debt are the increased costs of financing with debt instead of equity that result from a higher probability of bankruptcy. The fact that bankruptcy is generally a costly process in itself and not only a transfer of ownership implies that these costs negatively affect the total value of the firm. These costs can be thought of as a financial cost, in the sense that the cost of financing increases because the probability of bankruptcy increases. One way to understand this is to realize that when a firm goes bankrupt investors holding its debt are likely to lose part or all of their investment, and therefore investors require a higher rate of return when investing in bonds of a firm that can easily go bankrupt. This implies that an increase in debt which ends up increasing a firm's bankruptcy probability causes an increase in these bankruptcy costs of debt. In the trade-off theory of capital structure, firms are supposedly ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merton Miller
Merton Howard Miller (May 16, 1923 – June 3, 2000) was an American economist, and the co-author of the Modigliani–Miller theorem (1958), which proposed the irrelevance of debt-equity structure. He shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1990, along with Harry Markowitz and William F. Sharpe. Miller spent most of his academic career at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. Biography Early years Miller was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Jewish parents Sylvia and Joel Miller, a housewife and attorney. He attended Harvard University as an undergraduate student. He worked during World War II as an economist in the division of tax research of the Treasury Department, and received a Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, 1952. His first academic appointment after receiving his doctorate was Visiting Assistant Lecturer at the London School of Economics. Career In 1958, at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franco Modigliani
Franco Modigliani (; ; 18 June 1918 – 25 September 2003) was an Italian-American economist and the recipient of the 1985 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. He was a professor at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Carnegie Mellon University, and MIT Sloan School of Management. Early life and education Modigliani was born on 18 June 1918 in Rome to the Jewish family of a pediatrician father and a voluntary social worker mother."Franco Modigliani" by Daniel B. Klein and Ryan Daza, inThe Ideological Migration of the Economics Laureates, '' Econ Journal Watch'', 10(3), September 2013, pp. 472–293 He entered university at the age of seventeen, enrolling in the faculty of Law at the Sapienza University of Rome.Parisi, Daniela (2005) "Five Italian Articles Written by the Young Franco Modigliani (1937–1938)", ''Rivista Internazional di Scienze Sociali'', 113(4), pp. 555–557 (in language) In his second year at Sapienza, his submission to a nationwide contest in econo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Debenture
In corporate finance, a debenture is a medium- to long-term debt instrument used by large companies to borrow money, at a fixed rate of interest. The legal term "debenture" originally referred to a document that either creates a debt or acknowledges it, but in some countries the term is now used interchangeably with bond, loan stock or note. A debenture is thus like a certificate of loan or a loan bond evidencing the company's liability to pay a specified amount with interest. Although the money raised by the debentures becomes a part of the company's capital structure, it does not become share capital. Senior debentures get paid before subordinate debentures, and there are varying rates of risk and payoff for these categories. Debentures are freely transferable by the debenture holder. Debenture holders have no rights to vote in the company's general meetings of shareholders, but they may have separate meetings or votes e.g. on changes to the rights attached to the debentures. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
