Chapter 14
Financial Structure and International Debt
( Questions
1. Objective. What, in simple wording, is the objective sought by finding an optimal capital structure? When taxes and bankruptcy costs are considered, a firm has an optimal financial structure determined by that particular mix of debt and equity that minimizes the firm’s cost of capital for a given level of business risk. If the business risk of new projects differs from the risk of existing projects, the optimal mix of debt and equity would change to recognize trade-offs between business and financial risks.
2. Varying Debt Proportions. As debt in a firm’s capital structure is increased from no debt to a significant proportion of debt (say, 60%),
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Returns are not perfectly correlated between countries.
In contrast, a domestic German firm would not enjoy the benefit of cash flow international diversification but would have to rely entirely on its own net cash inflow from domestic operations. Perceived financial risk for the German firm would be greater than for a multinational firm because the variability of its German domestic cash flows could not be offset by positive cash flows elsewhere in the world.
5. Ex-Post Cost of Borrowing. Exhibit 14.2 in the text shows that Deutsche Bank borrowed funds at a nominal cost of 9.59% per annum, but at a later date that debt was selling to yield 7.24%. Near the other extreme, the Kingdom of Thailand borrowed funds at a nominal cost of 8.70% but after the fact found the debt was sold in the market at a yield of 11.87%. What caused the changes, in this case in opposite directions, and what might management do to benefit (as Deutsche Bank did) rather than suffer (as the Kingdom of Thailand did)?
Changes in foreign exchange rates caused the ex-post cost of borrowing to increase or decrease from what was originally expected. Management can only guess at future foreign exchange risk. Therefore, they could either borrow only in their functional currency or diversify by currency their sources of borrowing.
6. Local Norms.
40%/9% Bonds and Common Stock generates a lower EPS, EBT, and Net Income in all years in comparison to the 50/50 option and is therefore not a practical capital structure option. The interest paid on bonds creates a lower EBT, net income, and total income available for common stockholders for all years in comparison to the 50/50 option. A capital structure of this mix might make banks reluctant to loan money due to the organization debt to income ratio. In addition, investors may be hesitant to invest due to the slow capital growth indicated by the
* $75M is deducted from equity through the creation of treasury stock, which is a contra-equity account.
When an input (machinery, components, capital, labor, etc.) is denominated in a foreign currency, the risk exists that an unfavorable exchange rate movement will increase the cost of doing business. When the products are priced and sold in a foreign currency, an adverse exchange rate movement will make the product appear more expensive to consumers, decreasing demand or forcing the company to reduce its own profit margin to maintain lower price levels. For companies with integrated international business systems, an exchange rate shock can literally force them out of business, with their operations experiencing pressures from both cost and profit centers.
The Debt Ratio, projects the relationship between the total assets and total debts of the company. This ratio is used to measure the financial risk of the company. In order to measure the financial risk, we need to look at the amount of debt that the company has incurred due to the financing of operations. This is done by comparing the total debt to the total assets of the company, from there we derive a debt percentage. The total debt amount includes, current and non-current liabilities. Whilst, the total assets amount includes, current and non-current assets. The overall ratio is expressed as a percentage. This percentage indicates how much of debt is incurred by the company, when financing its operations. If the overall percentage is high, it implies that the company is at a financial risk as there is a relatively high proportion of debt.As potential investors would not want to in a company which has a high percentage of debts.Whilst a low overall percentage, the company is at a low financial risk and are handling their debts well. The
Finding the perfect capital structure in terms of risk and reward can ensure a company meets shareholder expectations and protects a firm in times of recession. Capital structure refers to how a business puts its money to “work”. The two forms of capital structure are equity capital and debt capital. Both have their benefits and limitations. Striking that perfect balance between the two can mean the difference between thriving versus trying to survive.
L. According to the CAPM, I would have to say that the systematic risk would be the only risk that is applicable when looking at capital-budgeting purposes. One of the concerns that they will have is about the pertinent measurement of risk the project’s contribution will have on the company. The thought about how bankruptcy can and will affect the company’s and shareholder’s view of what measure of risk is rational. This to me would be an appropriate measure of risk because the cost that comes with bankruptcy that can be damaging.
c. Exchange rate risks: significant portion of revenue stream born currency exchange risk (peso vs. USD) regardless of geographical and product diversification. These risks were absolutely external and thus could have been hardly mitigated.
The effect of financial leverage on the cost of equity is prevalent in the Modigliani-Miller capital structure theory. Since the financial leverage increases the cost of equity, it can be considered one of the disadvantages of borrowing. As shown in Appendix A, the cost of equity, at each debt to capital ratio, increases by 0.1% as the financial leverage increases by 10%. With a higher
Given the nature of its business, Jaguar is faced with three types of exchange rate exposure (1) Transaction, (2) Translation and (3) Economic . Transaction exposures arise whenever the firm commits (or is contractually obligated) to make or receive a payment at a future date denominated in a foreign currency. Translation exposures arise from accounting based changes in consolidated financial statements caused by a change in exchange rates. In this case we primarily focus on the Economic exposure -also known as Operating exposure or Competitive exposure- of Jaguar.
1. Why should a firm have a capital structure policy, i.e. a target debt ratio?
While using debt may add pressure to a company’s ongoing operations as a result of having to meet interest-payment obligations, it helps retain more profits within the company compared to using equity, which requires the sharing of company profits with equity holders. Using debt, companies need to pay only the amount of interest out of their profits. Using equity, on the other hand, the more profits a company makes, the more it has to share with equity investors. To take advantage of such a debt-financing feature, companies often use debt to finance stable business operations in which they can more easily make ongoing interest payments and, meanwhile, retain the rest of the profits to themselves.
The American nation emerged after taking loans to finance the War of Independence. In 1791 the debt was 75 million dollars. Today the US national debt. Increases by approximately every hour.
overall levels of debt vs. equity financing is still an open question. Debt ratios of
A firm can choose a mix of three modes of financing i.e. issuing shares, borrowing from the market and use of retained earnings. The ratio of this mix of funds purely depends on the firm and known as optimal capital structure of the firm. This leads to the different capital structure theories. These theories explain their
Another is the change in exchange rates, which also affect the amount required to pay back and ultimately the profit. As we know currency exchange rates and interest rates can change in the matter of seconds, causing uncertainty therefore creating more risk in addition to the risk created by leveraging.