Notes On Trade Off Theory

Many companies in the United States are struggling to survive. These companies are experiencing significant decreases in revenue, reduced assets, and increases in liabilities. Companies that already filed, or are at-risk for filing bankruptcy are struggling with keeping up with their competitors, causing the companies to lose their value. When a company files for bankruptcy, the company no longer gets to make the business decisions. The bankruptcy courts begin to make the decisions for the companies in efforts to restore the businesses. If the company is unable to revive itself from bankruptcy status, the company goes out of business. If this occurs, the company must sell everything it owns in order to compensate its shareholders and repay

Chapter 7 bankruptcy is often referred to as the liquidation bankruptcy because your non-exempt assets are sold (liquidated) by a bankruptcy trustee, with the proceeds (money) being distributed among creditors in order of highest priority to lowest.

b. Other indications of financial difficulties (default on loan or similar agreements, arrearages in dividends, denial of usual trade credit from suppliers, restructuring of debt, noncompliance with statutory capital requirements, the need to seek new sources or methods of financing, or the need to dispose of substantial assets).

Now, the advantages of debt capital centre on its relative cost. Debt capital is usually cheaper than equity because, the pre-tax rate of interest is invariably lower than the return required by shareholders. This is due to the legal position of lenders who have a prior claim on the distribution of the company’s income and who in liquidation precede ordinary shareholders in the queue for the settlement of claims. Debt is usually secured on the firm’s assets, which can be sold to pay off lenders in the event of default, i.e. failure to pay interest and capital according to the pre-agreed schedule;

With the three debt instruments in the case, hundreds of millions of dollars would become readily available to the company and be at their disposal. Each of the financing opportunities provides their own money in different forms. Great companies need these different financing ideas to

Although the increased leverage decreases the amount of earnings available to stock holders from 496.9 million to 451.7 million for a total of 45.2 million dollars, it has a positive affect for the company’s tax structure. It actually reduces the company’s tax liability by 83 million dollars! Without the debt they have to pay 952.5 million dollars in taxes. However after an increase of 30% leverage, the new tax liability is 869.5 million dollars.

Although riskier, debt financing helps company have a better financial structure and because Blaine Kitchenware refuses to do so, we agree that their capital structure and pay out policies are not the most appropriate for the firm.

A capital structure policy aims to balance the trade-off between the benefits of debt financing (interest tax shield) and the costs of debt financing (financial distress and agency costs). Every firm should set its target capital structure such that its cost and benefits of leverage ultimately maximise the firm’s value. Graham and Harvey asked 392 firms’ chief financial officers whether they use target debt ratios. Results show that the majority of them do, although the level of strictness of the target policy varies across different companies. Only 19% of the firms avoid target ratios, of which most are likely to be the relatively smaller firms. This clearly

According to the Equilibrium Theory, a company has reached its optimal capital structure when it minimizes the total sum of taxes paid and the cost of financial distress. Taxes paid and the costs of financial distress develop in opposite directions as the interest coverage ratio (EBIT/interest) changes. While the tax shield effect and thus the amount of taxes paid at different coverage ratios can easily be calculated using the marginal tax rate (in the case of Diageo 27%), the cost of financial distress has to be approximated using sophisticated financial models (e.g. Monte Carlo Analysis) that take into account probabilities of different direct and indirect costs of financial distress.

Due to high investment in fixed asset the firm also need a high amount of debt in order to cover its expenses so the smooth run of business.

It seems then that companies should fully leverage the company or a least come close to doing so but there is a probability that the company enters financial distress as its leverage (D/E) increases. Financial distress can be very costly for companies, and the cost for this scenario is shown in the current market value of the levered firm's securities. Investors factor the potential for future distress into their assessment of the present value (this is where PV of distress costs is subtracted from un-levered company value and the PV of the tax-shield.) The value for the costs

From this set of problems, we can see that leverage is good for the firm. Leverage has increased the value of the firm as a whole and increased the price per share. Although the cost of debt increases the firm's risk because it increases the probability of default and bankruptcy, therefore shareholders will require higher rates of return on the equity they provide, debt also provides tax savings. And we can see that in table 4, where we calculated the total value of the firm as the pure business cash flows plus the tax savings. Another reason why debt increases firm value is the fact that it reduces WACC, because the cost of debt is generally lower than the cost of equity. Another option that shareholders can do is using homemade leverage. Shareholders should pay a premium for the shares of a levered firm when the addition of debt increases value.

Nevertheless, firms have used leverage even before corporate taxes have been introduced (Maris and Elayan, 1990). This implies the existence of some market imperfections, which benefit the use of debt financing, thus enable a trade-off of the cost and benefits of debt resulting in an optimal capital structure, where marginal cost equal marginal benefits.

The pecking order theory ( Donaldson 1961) of capital structure is among the most influential theories of corporate leverage. The pecking order theory is based on different of information between corporate insiders and the market. According to Myers (1984), due to adverse selection, firm prefer internal to external finance. If internal finance proves insufficient, bank borrowings and corporate bonds are the preferred source of external source of finance. After exhausting both of these possibilities, the final and least preferred source of finance is

Harris and Reviv (1990) gave one more reason of using debt in capital structure. They say that management will hide information from shareholders about the liquidation of the firm even if the liquidation will be in the best interest of shareholders because managers want the perpetuation of their service. Similarly, Amihud and Lev (1981) suggest that mangers have incentives to pursue strategies that reduce their employment risk. This conflict can be solved by increasing the use of debt financing since bondholders will take control of the firm in case of default as they are powered to do so by the debt indentures. Stulz (1990) said when shareholders cannot observe either the investing decisions of management or the cash flow position in the firm, they will use debt financing. Managers, to maintain credibility, will over-invest if it has extra cash and under-invest if it has limited cash. Stulz (1990) argued that to reduce the cost of underinvestment and overinvestment, the amount of free cash flow should be reduced to