This report details a study of capital structure for JSE listed companies. The study considered historical financial information for JSE listed companies over the period 1987 to 2009 and asked two central questions, with the benefit of hindsight. Firstly, could JSE listed companies have used more debt to finance their operations during this period? Secondly, how much additional debt could these companies have used and thereby increase shareholder value? An optimal debt ratio maximises shareholder value by optimising tax benefits of debt. This study analysed data for 97 companies that were within the top 160 JSE listed companies. For each year of data, debt was increased while maintaining certain pre-selected debt service ratios, to determine how much additional debt these companies could have had. These ratios were interest coverage, cash coverage and DSCR. The results indicate that in most sectors of the JSE companies could have used significantly more debt to finance their operations over the past 22 years. By so doing these companies would have increased shareholder value over the years. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

No abstract available. / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Centre for Human Rights / unrestricted

No description available.

In the past decade a lot of attention has been devoted to the option valuation approach to i~vestments in financial economics. This theory provides a fl exible way of incorporating uncertainty and irreversibility into the making of the investment decision. The primary purpose of this study is to extend the contingent claim approach by introducing a strategic dimension into the investment decision. In particular we focus on the case where an investor may be preempted by one or more competitors, and where there is an advantage of acting first. Secondly, we apply the strategic options approach to some important areas in financial economics, such as corporate investment under uncertainty, corporate default , market micro-structure . and the timing of arbitrage. Apart from illustrating the wide applicability and relevance of the techniques, this also clarifies some important issues in financial economics. 'Option Games' (jointly written with William Perraudin) describes a way of incorporating strategic behaviour and asymmetric information into optimal stopping decisions under uncertainty. vVe derive optimal stopping rules when each agent's payoff is affected by the actions of other agents and these latter are of unknown type. 'Strategic Sequential Investments: an Application to Preemptive Patenting' derives the optimal investment rules for an incumbent and a challenger who both have an option to patent an innovation with stochastic payoff. We find that the optimal trigger rule is determined by a trade-off between the benefit of waiting to invest and the need to act quickly due to the competitive threat. In particular, we demonstrate that both the strategic Marshallian break-even investment trigger and the trigger obtained by the option valuation approach are in fact limit_ing polar cases of the strategic investment trigger developed in this paper. We then extend the model to a two-stage sequential investment situation where the first and the second stage respectively consist of patenting and launching the product. The model allows us to explain and analyse the phenomenon of sleeping patents. It appears that sleeping patents are more likely to occur when interest rates are low, price volatility is high or when the first stage_ cost is small relative to the second stage cost. 'Creditor Races and Contingent Claims' (jointly written with William Perraudin) presents a simple pricing model in which two debt-holders with incomplete information about each other's type decide when to foreclose on a financially-distressed firm. 'The Timing of Arbitrage: an Options Approach' presents a continuous-time modei for the timing of riskless arbitrage when the mispricing between two equivalent portfolios varies stochastically through time under the exogenous impact of liquidity trades and when there is a persistent prospect that the arbitrage bubble can 'burst'. The model endows the arbitrageur with n options to do arbitrage. When endogenously determined arbitrage bounds a re violated one or more arbitrage trades bring asset prices back within the bounds. The model is extended to the case where there are two competing arbitrageurs who have incomplete information about each other's type.

The thesis considers the effects of public policy with respect to disclosure on rivalrous competition in duopolies. Principal contributions to the stochastic oligopoly theories of information sharing include imbedding an investment stage in the standard noncooperative two-stage information sharing/output (pricing) games under a wide range of assumptions about effects of investment or distributions of returns, and investigating the extent to which altering the usual preference assumption to allow risk aversion may affect information choice. At an information sharing level, it is established that, besides being sensitive to the type of competition and the nature of information asymmetries, as previously reported in the literature, private incentives to disclose also depend importantly on both the impact of investment and risk preferences. In this regard, equilibrium levels of investment are shown to be affected nontrivially by variance effects from investment, risk attitude of decision makers, as well as the type of industry rivalry. Also characterized are the welfare orderings obtained as a consequence of these varying disclosure effects on the decisions and hence profits of competing firms. If alternative accounting practices are distinguishable along the informativeness dimension, then, at an abstract level, the analysis can be seen as approaching the study of many accounting issues from a distinctly different perspective than the familiar tax or wealth transfer viewpoints. The principal contributions to the accounting literature include identifying the impact of disclosure rules or rule changes on industry, consumers, and society as a whole, and offering insights to the accounting policy makers concerning the results of disclosure regulation. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

This study is an attempt at assembling, analyzing and appraising the main techniques that have been or are used in Canada to collect, estimate and classify data on capital formation. Data on capital formation are of importance to both government and business. They assist government in policy formulation directed towards national objectives, and business in planning towards the goals of the enterprise. In consideration of the usefulness of capital formation data to government and business, the techniques used in their derivation are examined with a view to improving the accuracy and value of the data without too great incurrence of additional costs. The conclusion of this study is that specific improvements can be incorporated into the current techniques. Among the improvements suggested are the introduction of stratification in sample surveys to increase the accuracy of estimates, of classificatory breakdown according to size of establishments to increase the usefulness of the data, and the reduction of structure details in questionnaire forms used in collecting data to release manpower and time for stratification and more detailed classification work. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

This doctoral thesis consists of five self-contained essayspresented to the Faculty Board of the Royal Institute ofTechnology. Property valuation is a central issue that forms acommon thread in the analysis in these essays. In the thesisproperty is considered in a mixed asset context in an attemptto build a bridge between valuation, property investment andfinancial theory. The object of the thesis is to value propertyfor finance, sales and purchases and investment. Theinvestigation of the thesis extends traditional valuation withan integrated approach using econometric technology. Essay I estimates the market value of townhouses underdevelopment in a North American city. The traditional hedonicregression model is used to predict the value of the complex asa whole, as well as of the individual unit. The role of theproperty tax in explaining property valuation is indicated andthe valuation errors of the predicted values estimated in theessay relative to the prices realized in the market suggest thefeasibility of regression analysis for preconstructionappraisal. Essay II investigates the implicit prices of property valuesin the Beijing residential market. An uncertainattribute—"perceived construction risk" enters the modelas a proxy for a consumer's subjective probability ofconstruction quality. Public facilities are found to reduce thevalue of residences and consumers would be willing to pay ahighly substantial amount of money to protect themselves fromthe risk of poor construction quality. Essay III studies the long-term relationship between housingprices and property stock prices under the Swedish rent controlsystem from 1980 to 1998. The Vector Autoregressive (VAR) modelwith a subsystem approach is used to test cointegration and theError Correction Model (ECM) and Granger Causality are alsotested. The tests provide evidence of co-movement between thehousing market and property stock market and suggest the roleof rentals in raising the speed of movement towards thelong-term equilibrium of asset prices. Essay IV models the volatility of property stock returns inthe Swedish market from 1990 to 1999. The GeneralAutoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model isapplied to capture time-varying volatility and the GARCH-Mmodel is used to price this volatility. The vacancy rate isfound to help explain persistent volatility and risk spillovereffects from the bond market and the direct real estate marketare expected. Essay V analyzes the inflation hedging ability of Swedishproperty stocks from 1980 to 1999. Two expected inflationrates—UND1x inflation and GARCH inflation—andcointegration technology are used for this study. For theperiod as a whole, no inflation hedging behavior is found, butfor the period of 1986–1993 when the vacancy rate was low,short-run inflation hedging is indicated. / <p>NR 20140805</p>

0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

The thesis project analyses current investment opportunities in the real estate market. It investigates the standard sales through real estate agencies and direct sales from developers; the core focus is however on alternative options of buying properties, such as foreclosure auctions, auctions of financial authorities, purchases of agricultural land, etc. The theoretical part of the work examines the ba-sic terminology and ways of buying properties. The practical part uses the findings and evaluates investment opportunities with regard to their risks, the difficulty of the process of acquiring the property and most importantly the return on investment.