Made available in DSpace on 2010-04-20T20:08:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 1995-07-31T00:00:00Z / The aspect concerning to liquidity and solvency evaluation of business enterprises has raised in recent years as a meaningful question of financial analysis, favored by an economic environment of high turbulence, competition, inflation, and accounting and tax rules that change frequently. A meaningful number of financial ratios has been suggested by academic researchers since those classic liquidity ratios arised of balance sheet until those performance measures based on flow statements - income statement and statement of changes in financial position. One of them, the cash flow statement has been built for internal purposes by many corporations, especially those that used to keep sofisticated instruments of operational control. But just a few years ago some countries - such United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand - began to employ this statement for external disclosure purposes. On opposite of that tendency, legal requirements in Brazil do not motivate another report different of sources and applications of net working capital. Maybe cash flow statement might provide more relevant data about liquidity and solvency to users, and easier information to understand, whose cannot be found elsewhere in financial reports. lt seems to be the case of financial institutions: just in recent period the Banco Central do Brasil (an institution with the function of Federal Reserve in USA) has required a statement on cash basis to that entities. Evidences showed in this research pointed out cash flow statement provides more relevant and understandable information that another whose shows the changes in net working capital. So, it seems to be coherent move the funds concept from net working capital to cash and near cash itens for external purposes. Another aspect, it must be clear that data obtained of income statement - such net profit or net lose - and of cash flow statement - distributed among three fundamental activities of business enterprises - is different and fill distinct goals: lucrativity and liquidity, in respective. In right, there is a tendency on retirement of statement of changes in net working capital in defense of cash flow statement. Many relations might be obtained of cash flow statement, especially those related to cash flow provided (or used) by operations. They are built in a similar way of conventional measures, so they have the same limitations when used alone or to a short period. Like return on investment ratio, there is possibility of manipulations - provided by revenues antecipations or/and payments made after they are due - related some of basic activities of entity. The cash recovery rate means a complex measure of evaluation of liquidity level, both to individual investment projects and to whole business. This ratio has incorporated some improvements introduced by researchers. The index is based on supositions which demands stronger evidence of its validity. The adoption of this ratio in its original format described by IJIRI provides a reasonable approximation to cash from operations/net assets ratio. Another aspect, the approach employed by FLEURIET to derive operational cash flow, on the same way, seems as a aproximated measure to the numerator of cash return ratios. The whole model aids financial analists in liquidity and solvency evaluation of business, and also in identifying their financial structures used and/or caracteristic of the segment focused on, as soon as their relative tendences noted. So that, this model may be employed as a additional instrument to cash flow statement - not ignoring possible differences in understanding the cash and near cash itens concept of funds. The sequence of results on this research demonstrated the meaningfulness and usefulness of short run operational performance measures evaluation, especially cash recovery rate (IJIRI) and operational cash flow/net assets (FLEURIET). The behavior of these ratios through the years helps users in measuring relative payment ability of corporation - its liquidity - in both operational and whole dimensions. These ratios mean, in essence, approximations to cash provided from operations/net or operational assets ratio, whose numerator represents the main activity showed in cash flow statement. At first, the approximation level among those three ratios tends to decrease whatever there would be a higher level of detailed and quality of information disclosed in financial reports. Therefore, higher level of agregation of these reports might lead distortions on those ratios. There is a need for new researches in this way, especially using greater samples and employing analitical data as a way to forecast tendences on business segments. Researches might adopt sofisticated statistical models also. This study just provided technical basis to support new researches. / Trata de uma análise da liquidez e solvência empresarial, na busca de um indicador mais adequado para avaliação do desempenho operacional de curto prazo. Introduz a demonstração de fluxos de caixa, ressalta a importância do item caixa gerado das atividades operacionais, e desenvolve os quocientes taxa de recuperação de caixa e caixa das operações/ativos brutos com base nas metodologias descritas por ljiri e Fleuriet, respectivamente. Apura os índices para uma amostra de companhias de capital nacional industrial, e compara tendências de medidas operacionais diversas.