Funding requirements is one of the first criteria to consider when restructuring a business. Companies and taxpayers would choose the best option when acquiring shares to minimise tax liabilities. The purpose of this study is to formulate an interest deductibility test which provides guidance to taxpayers regarding the main criteria to investigate when restructuring a business transaction to ensure that interest will be deductible on the acquisition of shares with borrowed funds. The findings reveal the similarities and differences of the interest deductibility as seen by South Africa, Australia and Canada. This study will present the legislation as well as court cases in South Africa, Australia and Canada to demonstrate the interest deductibility principles when funds are borrowed to acquire shares when restructuring a business. The focus will be on these principles to provide guidelines from which taxpayers can determine the interest deductibility with respect to share purchasing transactions. The study will indicate recommendations to South African legislation based on the findings of alternative treatments applied by Canada and Australia. / Thesis (MCom (South African and International Taxation))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

Funding requirements is one of the first criteria to consider when restructuring a business. Companies and taxpayers would choose the best option when acquiring shares to minimise tax liabilities. The purpose of this study is to formulate an interest deductibility test which provides guidance to taxpayers regarding the main criteria to investigate when restructuring a business transaction to ensure that interest will be deductible on the acquisition of shares with borrowed funds. The findings reveal the similarities and differences of the interest deductibility as seen by South Africa, Australia and Canada. This study will present the legislation as well as court cases in South Africa, Australia and Canada to demonstrate the interest deductibility principles when funds are borrowed to acquire shares when restructuring a business. The focus will be on these principles to provide guidelines from which taxpayers can determine the interest deductibility with respect to share purchasing transactions. The study will indicate recommendations to South African legislation based on the findings of alternative treatments applied by Canada and Australia. / Thesis (MCom (South African and International Taxation))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

In computational finance, finite differences are a widely used tool in the valuation of standard derivative contracts. In a lower-dimensional setting, high accuracy and speed often characterize such methods, which gives them a competitive advantage against Monte Carlo methods. For option contracts with discontinuous payoff functions, however, finite differences encounter problems to maintain the order of convergence of the employed finite difference scheme. Therefore the timesteps are often computed in a conservative manner, which might increase the total execution time of the solver more than necessary.     It can be shown that for American call options written on dividend paying stocks, it may be optimal to exercise the option right before a dividend is paid out. The result is that yet another discontinuity is introduced in the solution and the timestep is often reduced to preserve the intrinsic convergence order. However, it is thought that at least in theory the optimal length of the timestep is an increasing function of the time elapsed since the last discontinuity occured. The objective thus becomes that of finding an explicit method for adjusting the timestep both at the dividend instants and between dividend instants. Keeping the discretization in space constant leads to a time non-equidistant finite difference problem.     The aim of this thesis is to propose a time non-equidistant numerical finite difference algorithm for valuation of American call options on stocks with dividends known in advance. In particular, an explicit formula is proposed for computing timesteps at the dividend instants and between dividend payments given a user-specified error tolerance. A portion of the report is also devoted to numerical stabilization techniques that are applied to maintain the convergence order, including Rannacher time-marching and mollification.

Economists have studied the relationship between population growth and economic growth for a very long time and not found any clear relationships. Recently they have begun to focus on the factors of population growth such as fertility and mortality rates. From this line of study came the age-structure hypothesis. The age-structure hypothesis was founded on the evidence from Asia’s very successful demographic transition and many economists are now wondering whether Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) will be able to repeat this feat. Hence, this study aims to investigate the relationship between the dependency ratio (a ratio between the dependents (ages 0-14 and 65+) and the number of workers (aged 15-64) in a population (Eastwood and Lipton, 2012)) and economic growth in SSA and search for evidence of a demographic dividend. Not many previous studies have been done focusing completely on SSA and this study therefore aims to shed some light on the subject. The investigation was done by a cross-sectional regression analysis using a sample of 26 sub-Saharan countries and secondary data from mostly the World Bank. The results show a significant relationship between both versions of the dependency ratio and economic growth but do not show evidence of a demographic dividend. Out of the two versions of the age-structure hypothesis, most support was found for the strong version. Furthermore, support was found for the conditional convergence theory and both savings per capita and the initial level of education were found significant. However, the results had problems with severe multicollinearity and it was concluded that the results were not entirely reliable and should not be depended upon.

This thesis examines the patterns and determinants of corporate financial policy (capital structure and dividend policy) in Zimbabwe. In particular it investigates various aspects of corporate financial behaviour in an emerging market; the evolution of corporate financial structure and dividend payout ratio over the past 25 years (1975-1999), the impact of the reform programme (introduced in 1992) on firm characteristics, the corporate financing patterns during the period 1990-1999, the determinants of corporate capital structures and dividend policy and the interaction between corporate financing and dividend policy decisions. The main results that emerge from the analysis suggest that (i) the debt ratio for the Zimbabwean corporate sector significantly increased after the reform (ii) the Zimbabwean corporate sector mainly depends on external finance (75 % of total financing) especially short-term finance, which contributes 52 % of total financing. Furthermore, the results support the following hypotheses (i) the pecking order hypothesis that firms prefer internal financing to external financing, (ii) the trade-off hypothesis that non-debt tax shields reduce the expected gains from leverage, (iii) firms use liquid assets to finance investments, (iv) the agency cost hypothesis that increasing managerial ownership helps to align the interests of managers and shareholders and therefore reduces the role of debt as an agency-conflict mitigating factor, (v) large firms have lower bankruptcy costs and therefore can support more debt than smaller firms, (vi) debt service limits the amount of cash paid out as dividends, and (vii) high growth firms rely on external finance more than low growth firms (viii) high growth and firms have low payout ratios (iv) Cash flows and institutional investors increase the likelihood that firms will pay dividends (v) capital structure and dividend policy decisions are interdependent and highly leveraged firms have low payout ratios.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1982. / Also available in print.

Dividend policy, its determinants, and its impact on firm value are of significant academic interest, and many theories and explanations have been posited on the subject over the years, but there has not been a universal agreement. This thesis examines the links between dividend policy, various aspects of stock liquidity and price informativeness. We study a sample of UK firms over the period from 1996-2013. We show that, on average, stocks of dividend payers have significantly lower bid–ask spread and a lower illiquidity ratio than their counterparts of non-dividend payers. We also find that stocks of high-dividend payers are more liquid than those of firms that pay low or no dividends. These findings are consistent with the predictions of asymmetric information that posit that paying dividends reveals inside information to the market and hence decreases the level of asymmetric information, leading to higher stock liquidity. In the subsequent analysis, we suggest and examine a new channel through which dividend policy can impact firm value. Specifically, we show that dividend payers are less exposed to shocks in the aggregate market liquidity than non-dividend payers. Similarly, we find that the systematic liquidity risk is negatively associated with amount of dividends. Finally, in the context of signalling and agency costs models, we show that dividends are negatively related to stock price informativeness and that this relationship is stronger for firms with lower stock liquidity. The findings imply that dividend policy can both affect and be affected by stock markets.

No description available.

This research examines the impact of dividend payout (DP) on future effective firm value for a large international sample of publicly listed companies. Besides the known share price drop right after dividend announcements, literature provides a solid basis for argumentation towards a positive as well as a negative relationship on a longer horizon, going beyond this initial market reaction. The underlying research is the first to discuss and directly examine this issue, following the valuation model introduced by Fama and French (1998). The statistically significant and robust results show a positive impact of DP towards future firm value on a one- and two-year horizon. This research further accounts for the effect of National Governance (NG), proxied by the World Governance Index, as country level moderator on the main relationship. The interacting effect on the main variables is statistically significant on horizons beyond one year.

Submitted by Bruno Pereira Pinto (brunopereira.p@petrobras.com.br) on 2017-08-16T21:46:35Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dividend Yield e os Retornos das Ações Brasileiras.pdf: 337408 bytes, checksum: db0110b730ea5d14f64c7c6cb1ba9c1a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by GILSON ROCHA MIRANDA (gilson.miranda@fgv.br) on 2017-08-25T13:38:18Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dividend Yield e os Retornos das Ações Brasileiras.pdf: 337408 bytes, checksum: db0110b730ea5d14f64c7c6cb1ba9c1a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-31T13:19:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dividend Yield e os Retornos das Ações Brasileiras.pdf: 337408 bytes, checksum: db0110b730ea5d14f64c7c6cb1ba9c1a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-05-19 / This paper checks for the predictability of stocks negotiated in Sao Paulo Stock Exchange index from aggregate dividend yield. It examined a multiple regression of the excess return (Risk Premium) and return in relation to the dividend yields of prior periods and changes in dividends for the preceding year. The results show the predictive capacity of the dividend yield, especially for a one year lag. In this case, the coefficient with respect to the dividend yield is statistically and economically significant. However, this is gradually reduced over time until it became null. / Este trabalho verifica a previsibilidade dos retornos das ações cotadas na BM&FBovespa a partir do dividend yield. Foi elaborada uma regressão dos excessos de retorno (prêmios de risco) e retornos com relação ao dividend yield de períodos anteriores e das variações nos dividendos do ano imediatamente anterior. Os resultados evidenciam a capacidade preditiva do dividend yield, sobretudo para um ano de defasagem. Neste caso, o coeficiente com relação ao dividend yield é estatisticamente e economicamente significativo. No entanto, de maneira oposta ao obtido em estudos análogos realizados em outros países, a capacidade preditiva é gradativamente reduzida ao longo do tempo até se tornar nula.