In the corporate form of ownership, the shareholders are the owners of the firm. The shareholders elect the directors of the corporation, who in turn appoint the firm’s management. This separation of ownership from control in the corporate form of organization is what causes agency problems to exist. Management may act in its own or someone else’s best interests, rather than those of the shareholders. If such events
In this situation, the manager will try to increase profits as much as possible, meaning they may: • Select accounting methods that maximise profit instead of ones that better reflect the firm’s current position such as using a different depreciation method, accelerating revenue recognition or changing the level of depreciation. Try to manipulate accounting figures. Adopting a short-term focus instead of a long-term one. In this perspective, PAT is siding towards regulation. The Agency Costs of Equity One part of residual agency problems is the agency cost of equity. This is because managers’ shirking (they become less productive because they see no need to work for no extra pay) and conflicts with outside equity interests reduce the value of the firm. To minimise this, monitoring and bonding costs are required to implement measures to minimise its detrimental effect on the value of the firm. It must be noted that no firm will completely eliminate this as costs will increase exponentially as one tries to eradicate more and more. Thus, there is an optimal trade-off point between monitoring costs and agency costs. This is where the marginal monitoring and bonding cost equals the marginal shirk. The Agency Costs of Debt Much like the agency cost of equity, there is also one from debt. This is due to the fact that managers will always try to shift wealth from debt to equity holders. Managers have their stake in the firm’s equity and
Creditors normally focus on the liquidity or solvency of the borrower in terms of current ratio and quick ratio, which indicate whether the company has enough working capital to cover the short-term debts. Myer will enter into a syndicated facility agreement to refinance the existing borrowings of the Myer Group. Besides, creditors are interested in the business risks the company might undertake, which indicate the possibility that the company might be unable to pay back the long-term liability in the future. From this point, the expectation on high return on investment and high profitability in the long run make the creditor’s interest aligned with shareholders’ value.
This situation can lead to negative consequences for a business when its executives or management direct the organization to act in the best interest of themselves instead of the best interest of its owners or shareholders. Stockholders of the enterprise can keep this problem from arises by attempting to align the interest of management with that of themselves. This normally occurs through incentive pay, stock compensation, or other similar incentive packages that now cause the managers financial success to be tied to that of the company (Garcia, Rodriguez-Sanchez, & Fdez-Valdivia, 2015; Cui, Zhao, & Tang, 2007; Bruhl, 2003; Carols & Nicholas,
The scope of this paper is to analyze the kind of agency problems that emerges between The Hershey Company and their stakeholders and shareholders. To answer this, a review of the company`s board structure and ownership structure was made. Thereafter two specific situations that has occurred in recent times was used as case examples to enlighten the agency problems suggested to emerge by the corporate structure.
Conflicts between stockholders and creditors Conflict between shareholders and creditors is common for the company which use debt capital to form an optimum capital structure. As mentioned earlier, agency relation exist when one party works as an agent of the principal. In an organization management
The goal of corporations has constantly been changing, as to be expected the goal of any corporation is to be successful and profitable. In 1814, Francis Cabot Lowell sold stock to fund his business and a public company was formed. Throughout history selling stock has been a successful way to fund businesses and stimulate the economy from the development of these new businesses. CEOs originally saw their objective as overseeing the welfare of the employees and customer. If a decent profit was reached then the company paid out dividends but over time greed and corruption started to occur. Instead of placing employees and customers as priorities corporations started placing shareholders as the top priority. This concept was introduced by Michael Jensen and William Meckling and became well adopted. Shareholder prioritization opened the doors for much corruption that later followed.
The "agency problem" generally raises to the conflict of interest between organization and ownership in a corporate enterprise. Owners is primarily focused on maximizing its capital through the business, while management is mainly interested in maximizing and stabilizing its salaries and benefits without suffering or taking a serious risk to them, they always want to be in the safe side and not engage or be in real loss in their financial life.
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;
Managers and shareholders are the utmost contributors of these conflicts, hence affecting the entire structural organization of a company, its managerial system and eventually to the company's societal responsibility. A corporation is well organized with stipulated division of responsibilities among the arms of the organizational structure, shareholders, directors, managers and corporate officers. However, conflicts between managers in most firms and shareholders have brought about agency problems. Shares and their trade have seen many companies rise to big investments. Shareholders keep the companies running
The principals (the shareholders) have to find ways of ensuring that their agents (the managers) act in their interests.
As explained by Schelker (2013), the agency problem between the owners and the management of a firm is at the heart of the corporate governance literature. Hence, there is a need for a
Nevertheless if companies operate in weak markets and fail to create growth and profit the concept of maximization of shareholder wealth is also an opportunity for self-regulation and security against threats for a company. This approach is in particular useful for safeguarding against difficulties arising from wrong or misguided leadership within a corporation. Shareholders of a company have the strongest interest in a company’s success because they often invest a lot of capital in the business and require revenues for their deposit (Moore, 2002). As a matter of fact, they become more
shareholders invest to increase the commercial value of their shares to get higher returns while creditors invest capital into a company to get a steady rate of return and capital when it becomes due.
Managers have to make decisions in such a way that they don’t do anything illegal or morally frowned upon by society. The manager has to act on behalf of, and in the interest of both the company's shareholders and stakeholders. These actions need to be followed through regardless of whether or not the long term results benefit the company's shareholders – they should benefit all their stakeholders.