O presente trabalho propõe um modelo multicriterial para avaliação de alternativas de investimentos, o qual foi testado em um estudo de caso conduzido em uma concessionária de distribuição de energia elétrica com o objetivo de traduzir a multiplicidade de variáveis quantitativas e qualitativas que influenciam na tomada de decisão investimentos. Inicialmente, buscou-se identificar (a) quais métodos e técnicas quantitativas tradicionais (VPL – valor presente líquido; IL – índice de lucratividade; TIR – taxa interna de retorno; MTIR – taxa interna de retorno modificada; payback simples e descontado) são mais adequados ao contexto decisório da concessionária; e (b) que variáveis qualitativas exercem influência na decisão de investir, para que fossem incorporadas neste contexto. Em seguida, à luz do Método MAUT (Multi-Attribute Utility Theory), desenvolveu-se um modelo multicritério suportado por planilhas eletrônicas para auxiliar no processo de avaliação e seleção de alternativas de investimentos, através da modelagem das preferências dos decisores quanto à importância relativa de um critério em relação a outro. O modelo foi aplicado ao universo dos projetos de investimentos submetidos à avaliação no orçamento de 2006, no qual as recomendações atuais mostraram-se aderentes às decisões tomadas no passado, evidenciando a adequação do método em representar o contexto decisório da companhia, como para subsidiar as próximas discussões de investimentos. Do ponto de vista organizacional e acadêmico, o estudo contribui no sentido de aproximar a teoria da prática no processo de tomada de decisões corporativas. / This paper proposes a multicriteria model to evaluate capital investment alternatives, which was tested in a case study carried out at an electricity distribution concessionaire which intented to decode quantitative and qualitative variables that influence capital investment decision. The aim was to identify (a) which traditional quantitative methods and techniques: NPV (Net Present Value); IL (Profitability Rate); IRR (Internal Rate of Return); MIRR (Modified Internal Rate of Return) and payback period are most proper to decision making context of the concessionaire; and (b) which qualitative variables influence in capital investment decision so that these methods were added to that context. Based on MAUT (Multi-Attribute Utility Theory) a multicriteria methodology was developed based on spread sheets to help analyze and select capital investment alternatives. That could be accomplished by modelling decision makers preferences concerning the relative importance of one criterium over the other. This model was applied to all the investment projects submitted to evaluation in the 2006 budget, where the current recommendations showed consonant with decisions previously made. The used model proved suitable to represent the company decision context as well as proper to subside the next capital investment discussions. From an organizational and academic point of view, present paper approaches theoretical recommendation to corporate decision making practice.

Doctorat en sciences politiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The performance of capital projects, in terms of meeting cost, time and performance requirements, has always been questionable. Despite the availability of project management tools, techniques, processes and advanced software applications, the overall non-performance of large capital projects has seemed to stagnate over the past century. Calls by financiers and participating stakeholders have been surfacing since the 1980s for a different approach to the management of development and implementation of capital projects, especially those that extend into multiple countries. Rather than exploring the development of radical new ways for managing the life-cycle of large capital projects, this research focussed on conducting a review of general management areas and their response to institutional failure. Towards the end of the 20th century the corporate world experienced much turbulence and controversy with respect to responsible financial and corporate management. Various corporate scandals were reported, the result being the development and implementation of various forms of corporate governance principles. The roll-out and application of corporate governance soon became a global imperative with a fairly positive impact on responsible corporate citizenship. Given the success and global acceptance of corporate governance, the potential application of the principles contained in corporate governance guidelines, and even legislation, in the field of capital projects, was investigated. The view of projects as a form of temporary organisation was used to establish the parallel between general and project management practices, resulting in reference to the term project governance. In general project management literature, the term ‘project governance’ is used in various applications, namely information management protection, project control and even to indicate project portfolio management. However, no commonly agreed upon definition for the term was found. In order to contextualise the term ‘project governance’, an in-depth literature study was done on the evolutionary development of corporate governance as well as the characteristics of large capital projects. Given the literature background, a Delphi study was conducted among experienced and knowledgeable project practitioners and academics to establish a common definition and framework for project governance. Two important observations from the Delphi study were first the requirement that project governance should be strongly aligned with corporate governance principles and second and that a typical project governance framework should be fairly generic with flexibility to allow for customisation for specific applications. Given the input from the Delphi study, two corporate governance frameworks were selected as the basis from which to compile the principle backbone for a Concept Project Governance Framework (CPGF). In order to allow for the multi-country, multi-company participation of large capital projects, especially where established companies from the West are involved in projects in the developing world, the corporate governance frameworks of the United States of America (USA), namely the Sarbanes Oxley Act and the King II Report from South Africa, were used. These two frameworks represented the thinking and corporate drives of the two respective countries, and for that matter, the developed and developing worlds. With input from the Sarbanes Oxley Act, King II, Delphi results and literature review, the CPGF was constructed for testing on various case studies. The case study research was conducted in two phases. The first phase, also referred to as the primary case studies, comprised an in-depth study on two large projects involving cross-border participation by various local and international companies and stakeholders. Although it was intended to select a mix of successful and unsuccessful projects for the primary study, the unwillingness of project managers involved in unsuccessful projects to reveal information made the inclusion of these project cases not viable for this study. The two primary case studies selected were based on successful projects. The extent to which these projects formally or informally adhered to or did not adhere to project governance principles as stipulated in the CPGF was evaluated. Apart from a review of literature on the primary case studies, the nominal group technique (NGT) was also employed to extract embedded information from project role players. Their input was documented and incorporated into the CPGF. In order to confirm the general application of the CPGF, a set of secondary case studies was conducted. These case studies comprised a total of 15 capital projects, selected from various sources and industries. These projects were categorised as being ‘successful’, ‘questionable’ or ‘a failure’. The reasons for the outcomes were plotted against the existing CPGF criteria and it was evident that the reasons for success or failure could be traced to specific areas in the CPGF. According to the CPGF, the most prominent areas that determined project performance, whether failure or success, were the composition of the steering committee as well as adherence to ethics, responsible conduct and conflict of interest. Given the results of the research, the study concludes with a proposed Project Governance Framework (PGF) to be applied to large capital projects, especially during the initiation phase of the project. It is believed that adherence to the generic stipulations listed in the PGF will contribute positively to the successful outcome of large capital projects. Copyright 2008 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in his work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Bekker, MC 2008, Project governance for capital investments, PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-11112008-162737 / > D527/gm / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Graduate School of Technology Management / unrestricted

The thesis deals with the private finance and financial planning as whole.The first part includes presentation of bank products.Analytical part deals with model examples of products portfolios.

This dissertation consists of two essays dealing with two selected aspects of the investment decision process faced by individuals and corporations. In the first essay, I develop a model of a multiple-stage patent race between two rival firms to study the impact of technological competition on value and return dynamics of Research and Development (R&D) ventures. The model describes a firm's capital budgeting decision process in the presence of technical uncertainty, market uncertainty and preemption. I characterize the equilibrium of the race and derive optimal investment strategies. Analysis of the equilibrium firm value shows that the premium accruing to the technology "leader" is larger than the loss accruing to the technology "lagger" and that the marginal effect of success/failure is increasing in the uncertainty of cash flows. Risk premia demanded by an ownership claim to competing R&D ventures (i) increase when a rival pulls ahead in the race and (ii) are lower when rivals are "closer" to each other in the development process. Compared to the case where rival firms merge, R&D competition reduces the industry value and lowers the expected completion time for a project. The erosion in value, due to preemption, is higher when firms are "neck-and-neck" and in early stages of development. Numerical simulations show that, in later stages of development, risk premia demanded by the perfectly collusive market are generally lower than risk premia demanded by a portfolio of competing firms. The opposite is true in early stages of development, which suggests that R&D competition may actually lower the cost of early stage financing. In the second essay, I solve a portfolio allocation problem for an individual who can select between two risky assets and a riskless asset in the presence of capital gains taxes. I treat capital gains taxes as a form of endogenous transaction costs. Using this analogy, I characterize the trading strategy for the two assets, and study the effect of taxes on optimal portfolio diversification. The optimal strategy contains a "no trade" region and a dynamic tax-timing option. I find that the diversification costs due to capital gains taxes are substantial and the value of the tax deferral option is decreasing in the correlation among assets and in the volatility of the risky assets. By comparing the solution of the multiple asset portfolio problem to the one of an investor who can trade only in a mutual fund I am able to measure the value of the flexibility option of the multi-asset case as well as the cost of mutual fund turnover. Finally, I show that imposing a wash-sale constraint generates discontinuous portfolio rebalancing strategies. / Business, Sauder School of / Finance, Division of / Graduate

1 Legal aspects of startup financing and venture capital investments Abstract The aim of this diploma thesis is to analyze the legal aspects of startup financing, especially with a focus on venture capital investments. As the transaction documentation related to venture capital investments usually contains a significant number of foreign language clauses and provisions, a part of my thesis is dedicated to these clauses and their detailed description using practical examples. The content itself is divided into three parts. The first of them generally defines the companies referred to as startups and their individual development stages. It also answers the question, startups are facing in their beginnings, of choosing the appropriate legal form. The conclusion of the first part is then focused practically on individual methods used for startup valuation. The second part is then focused on the venture capital investment realization and specific transaction documentation associated with capital investment. The beginning of the second part is focused on pre-contractual documentation referred to as the Term Sheet and legal Due Diligence. Subsequently, the Shareholders' Agreement and individual foreign language clauses and provisions are analyzed. Those provisions are part of the Shareholders' Agreement in order...

This dissertation consists of two chapters. In the first chapter, I revisit the role of Central Banks, the principal entity responsible for economic and financial stability. I indicate that we can consider a universal role for a central bank instead of just a lender. I consider a model of the financial crisis and market rejuvenation where direct policies from the central bank are not efficient as the public authority lacks critical information about the status of the economy. In contrast, there exist agents who have superior information about the available assets and future projects of the economy. I show that the public authority can benefit from contracting the informed agents to the benefit of the society, where the central bank will trade off the benefit of higher financing from liquidity provision to informed agents for the cost of a public market contraction. Based on the insight of this chapter, I propose a proactive ``planner of last resort'' role for a central bank as opposed to a naive lender of last resort suggested by Bagehot’s dictum. In the second chapter, I investigate a fundamental and yet less explored moment of asset returns which is the expected time it takes for a given asset's return to change state from high to low or vice versa. I introduce formally the concept of ``expected traveling time'' in the context of asset prices and returns and demonstrate a number of results. Mainly, I provide pricing equations for a class of fixed-income assets, which their payoff would default to zero when particular states are triggered (similar to a risky bond). Moreover, I show that barrier like option prices can reveal transition probabilities of the underlying asset's return. Finally, I discuss the estimation of the traveling times from historical data where I identify a considerable variation of traveling times across different assets.

Capital investments provide both the opportunity and responsibility to design for sustainability since most of the environmental impact of a production system is determined by the design phase. However, today’s capital investment process of production lacks adaptation to sustainability needs. This thesis identifies the main deficiencies in the capital investment process of production that currently limit the environmental performance of equipment by means of a pharmaceutical industry case. The results indicate that to foster a more sustainable capital investment process, further strategic guidance, responsibility allocation, facilitating organisational conditions, information transparency and sustainability expertise are required. Equipment suppliers consider that better communication and the integration of sustainability into their customers’ business cases can facilitate more environmentally sustainable equipment delivery. A concept is proposed for systematically integrating environmental sustainability into the capital investment process of production in the future. / Kapitalinvesteringar ger möjlighet och ansvar att designa för hållbarhet eftersom det mesta av ett produktionssystems miljöpåverkan bestäms i designfasen. Dagens kapitalinvesteringsprocess för produktion saknar dock anpassning till hållbarhetsbehov. Denna uppsats identifierar de viktigaste bristerna i kapitalinvesteringsprocessen för produktion som för närvarande begränsar utrustningens miljöprestanda med hjälp av ett fall från läkemedelsindustrin. Resultaten visar att för att främja en mer hållbar kapitalinvesteringsprocess krävs ytterligare strategisk vägledning, ansvarsfördelning, underlättande organisatoriska förhållanden, informationstransparens och hållbarhets-expertis. Utrustningsleverantörer tycker att bättre kommunikation och i synnerhet integreringen av hållbarhet i deras kunders affärsplaner kan underlätta mer miljömässigt hållbara utrustningsleveranser. Ett koncept föreslås för att systematiskt integrera miljömässig hållbarhet i kapitalinvesteringsprocessen för produktion i framtiden.

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This paper investigates how U.S. private firms communicate with equity investors around private capital raising. Using multiple research methods, including survey, interview, and archival analysis, I provide systematic evidence on private firms’ public and private disclosure practices. I find that despite engaging in a low level of public disclosures, private firms actively communicate with investors through the private communication channel at initial fundraising and subsequent periods. Such private communication also exhibits greater cross-sectional variation. Focusing on provision of financial information, I provide evidence suggesting that private firm managers consider the relevance of information when making disclosure choices. Lastly, I investigate the relation be- tween firms’ private communication and public reporting preference and find a substitutive effect. The study informs current debate on regulating private market participants by examining existing disclosure landscape of private firms as an important first step.