This paper utilizes a sample of firms over the years 2000–2009 to test the effects of credit rating changes, the financial crisis, interest rates, and other variables on short-term, long-term, and total debt levels on the balance sheet. Each independent variable was created using a one year lag in order to run the regressions. The values of these variables from the previous year are being analyzed to see if they can predict debt levels for the following year. The results of this paper suggest that levels of long-term and total debt are somewhat reliant on and are positively correlated with the federal funds rate. The results indicate that short-term debt levels are much harder to predict, but they appear to be negatively correlated with the financial crisis. Long-term debt levels were also affected by this variable, but were positively correlated with it. Z-score was a significant predictor of all types of debt, and was positively correlated with each. In an effort to acquire as many data points as possible for the regressions, strict data filtration techniques were used. This limited the sample to 177 firms. The overall insignificance of the results in this study suggest that further research on what drives debt levels on the balance sheet is necessary. This will generate a greater understanding of firm behavior both inside and outside of a financial crisis.

This paper examines tracking stock issuances, a relatively uncommon method of equity restructuring. I utilize likely the entire population of tracking stock issuances on US exchanges – from the first ever in October 1984 to the most recent one in November 2009 – in order to analyze the effect that they have on the shortrun excess returns of issuing companies. I analyze the excess returns of companies that issue tracking stock that trade in the US, one year before and one year after completion of their restructuring. The results of this paper indicate that companies perform worse relative to a benchmark market index in the year following their tracking stock restructuring. However, it is important to note that the number of observations studied is relatively small, as there have been only 41 issuances of tracking stock since the first recorded case. This suggests that more data and greater research are necessary in order to more accurately measure the effects of tracking stock restructurings. With the limited data available, I find that there is a statistically significant decrease in excess stock returns following tracking stock issuances.

Through-out the history of the United States, there have been many bank panics starting with the first one in 1819. I use important data from bank panics which happened prior to 1934 to shed light on the most recent Panic of 2007. This data analysis will not only be important to explain the Panic of 2007, but will be essential to help provide insights to what can be done to remedy the situation. Even in 2012, the United States is still feeling the impact of what happened in 2007. Therefore by understanding history and analyzing the past, solutions to prevent future panics can be implemented.

The Say on Pay vote, part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law by Barack Obama in July 2010, is a non-binding vote that either approves or disapproves of the compensation given to Named Executive Officers. As of June 21, 2012, there have been 103 companies that have failed to reach 50% approval in this vote. For this paper I analyze the 103 companies over event windows of two, four, and ten days around the date of the failure to test for statistically significant abnormal stock market returns. None of the average cumulative abnormal returns for the three event windows are significant at any level, and I find no evidence that failing the Say on Pay vote corresponds to an increase or decrease in stock market returns.

<p>The costs and constraints to financing, and the factors that influence them, play critical roles in the determination of corporate capital structures.</p> <p>Chapter 1 estimates firm-specific marginal cost of debt functions for a large panel of companies between 1980 and 2007. The marginal cost curves are identified by exogenous variation in the marginal tax benefits of debt. The location of a given company's cost of debt function varies with characteristics such as asset collateral, size, book-to-market, intangible assets, cash flows, and whether the firm pays dividends. Quantifying, the total cost of debt is on average 7.9% of asset value at observed levels, reaching as high as 17.8%. Expected default costs constitute approximately half of the total ex ante cost of debt.</p> <p>Chapter 2 uses the intersection between marginal cost of debt functions and marginal benefit of debt functions to examine optimal capital structure. By integrating the area between benefit and cost functions, net benefit of debt at equilibrium levels of leverage is calculated to be 3.5% of asset value, resulting from an estimated gross benefit of debt of 10.4% of asset value and an estimated cost of debt of 6.9%. Furthermore, the cost of being overlevered is asymmetrically higher than the cost of being underlevered. Case studies of several firms reveal that, for some firms, the cost of being suboptimally levered is small while, for other firms, this cost is large, suggesting firms face differing sensitivities to the capital structure choice.</p> <p>Finally, Chapter 3 examines the role of financing constraints on intertemporal capital structure choices of the firm via a structural model of capital investment. In the model, firms maximize value by choosing the amount of capital to invest and the amount of debt to issue. Firms face a dividend non-negativity constraint that restricts them from issuing equity and a debt capacity constraint that restricts them from issuing non-secured debt. The Lagrange multipliers on the two constraints capture the shadow values of being constrained from equity and debt financing, respectively. The two financing constraint measures are parameterized using firm characteristics and are estimated using GMM. The results indicate that these measures capture observed corporate financing behaviors and describe financially constrained firms. Finally, between the two financing constraints, the limiting constraint is the debt restriction, suggesting that firms care about preserving financial slack.</p> / Dissertation

Zugl.: Köln, Univ., Diss., 2009

This dissertation work provides a kaleidoscope of alternative empirical estimation techniques while illuminating and challenging conventional approaches and established findings in the Corporate Finance literature. In particular, the observed „conglomerate discount“ and the effect of diversication and concentrated ownership on firm value are revisited in the course of my cumulated doctoral thesis. In doing so, the main emphasis lies on the inference of causation in the presence of endogeneity concerns, namely by considering potential distortions caused by unobserved heterogeneity, reverse causality or non-random self-selection.

In the absence of taxes and transactions costs, there can be no benefit to corporate reorganization from a financial standpoint, but ‘real world’ limitations and frictions do provide additional value that is gained through divestitures in terms of focus and financial flexibility. Herein, the corporate divestiture decision is analyzed to determine the motivation for a parent company either to cleave its offspring directly to the external capital market in an equity carve-out or to distribute the shares to the existing shareholders in a tax-free spin-off. Cash flow performance, asymmetric information, relative size of the divestiture, and relatedness of the parent’s and subsidiary’s operations are all found to contribute significantly to the divestiture decision. In Canada, an alternate form of security, known as the income trust unit, has become popular for corporate reorganizations, either through an initial public offering or as a conversion of shares. The flow-through structure of income trusts currently allows avoidance of corporate taxation to offer higher pre-tax returns to retail investors, in a market setting where yield is increasingly equated with value. To determine placement of these securities in the market, the risk of the income trust organizational form is analyzed and compared to the standard corporate form. Further, a number of publicly known characteristics of the income trusts can predict the relative risk of this type of investment. In recent ‘hot markets’ for these securities, proof is uncovered that unsuitable firms have been migrating to this sector, but valuation of the investments in this sector has remained fair and full. Although pending legislation will discontinue the tax-exempt status of income trusts in 2011, during their tenure these securities have improved the Canadian market. Based on the data analysis herein, all types of divestitures studied have been predicted to provide commensurate value with respect to risk depending on the nature of the subsidiary. / Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2007-08-15 11:20:20.465

This dissertation consists of two essays on corporate finance. The first essay investigates the relationship between dual-class shares and firm’s risk-taking. While costs associated with dual-class shares are widely documented, the benefits are seldom studied in the literature. We attempt to fill this gap and find that dual-class firms tend to have fewer business segments, higher volatilities in their cash flows, earnings, and investment opportunities compared to propensity-matched single-class firms. Business segments within a dual-class firm are also more positively correlated in their cash flows, earnings, or investment opportunities than those in single-class firms. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that dual-class shares can potentially shield insiders from short-term market pressure so they can focus on riskier projects to enhance long-term shareholder value. To provide a possible channel through which dual-class firms can increase corporate risk-taking, we examine one of the most important corporate investment decisions: mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Dual-class firms are more likely to engage in M&As, especially nondiversifying M&As. Corporate risks increase following M&As, and the increase is more for dual-class firms than for single-class firms. The second essay shows how CEO skills affect operating performance using a sample of 109 spin-offs from 1994 to 2009. Since a variety of studies indicate that firms in need of external financing are more likely to engage in spin-offs, we hypothesize that parent firms prefer to appoint financial experts as CEOs at spun-off units around spin-off transactions. We find that appointing spun-off unit CEOs with financial expertise brings significant and positive wealth effects. Furthermore, the CEOs with financial expertise significantly improve firms’ access to capital markets and subsequent operating performance. Conversely, we do not observe positive wealth effects at the spin-off announcement or improved operating performance following spin-offs when parent firms decide to assign non-financial experts as spun-off unit CEOs.

Die Projektfinanzierung ist eine bewährte Finanzierungsform für Großprojekte im Sektor Erneuerbare Energie. Selbst in den Krisenjahren ab 2007 zeigen sich in der aggregierten Betrachtung kontinuierliche Zuwächse im Volumen von projektfinanzierten Finanzierungstransaktionen. Die vorliegende Arbeit ermittelt im Rahmen einer Literaturanalyse und zweier empirischer Untersuchungen die angesichts der Krise ab 2007 notwendig gewordenen Anpassungen in finanzierungstechnischen Parametern sowie der Struktur von Projektfinanzierungen. Die einleitende Literaturanalyse beschäftigt sich mit einer Betrachtung der Entwicklung der Projektfinanzierungsvolumina sowie einer Erläuterung der typischen Beteiligten dieser Finanzierungsform und stellt ausgewählte Finanzierungsinstrumente dar. Im Sinne einer Triangulation der Forschungsmethoden kommen im Anschluss empirische Analysen mit je einem quantitativen und einem qualitativen methodischen Zugang zur Durchführung. Eine Regressionsanalyse von rund 950 internationalen Kredittranchen aus dem Sektor Erneuerbare Energie der Jahre 2000-2011 schafft aktuelle deskriptive Evidenz zu den Auswirkungen der Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise ab 2007 auf die Determinanten der Kreditmarge. Aufbauend auf die im Zuge der quantitativen Analyse gewonnenen Ergebnisse zeigt ein Case Study basierter Zugang im Rahmen von "cross-case" Analysen die spezifischen Erfolgsfaktoren und innovativen Ansätze in der Finanzierungsstruktur von 13 Großprojekten der Branche Erneuerbare Energie. Es zeigt sich, dass in der Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise ab 2007 abgeschlossene Projekte beträchtlich höhere Margen aufweisen, tendenziell kürzere Laufzeiten haben und umfangreichere Sicherheiten erfordern, um zu einem Financial Close zu gelangen. Finanzierungsinstrumente wie Projektanleihen, Miniperm Loans oder Leasingtransaktionen sowie die Teilnahme von ECAs oder IFIs an der Finanzierung ermöglichen Projektabschlüsse. Veränderungen in der Risikoteilungsstruktur in Form von Produktivitätsgarantien oder die Besicherung über ein Projektportfolio stellen weitere Maßnahmen dar, um auch in Zeiten angespannter Wirtschaftslage projektfinanzierte Vorhaben realisieren zu können. (author's abstract)