A central question in corporate finance has been about the optimal balance between both debt and equity financing when trying to determine the optimal capital structure of a new or existing firm. In this thesis, I investigate how the capital structure of the parent and carve-out company evolve following the carve-out itself. This investigation is a direct extension of Dittmar's (2004) work and contributes to the literature on the choice of a carve-out or spin-off. This leverage choice may be influenced by the parent corporation's need for cash, either to finance growth opportunities, to distribute cash to shareholders, or to repay debt (Michaely & Shaw, 1995).
Using a sample of 102 subsidiaries that have completed a carve-out between the years of 1985 and 2001 , I find that carve-outs do not have higher debt levels than spinoffs as reported in Dittmar's (2004) study. I also find that the parent firms ' leverage does not decrease as predicted. Leverage actually increases during the three years following the carve-out. I have also found that cash constraints, collateral value, and the parent firms ' pre-debt level are positively related to leverage choice while the parent firms' precarve- out cash constraint is negatively correlated. However, there is no significance between leverage and firm size, growth opportunities, or profitability.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses1990-2015-1561 |
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| Creators | Tompkins, Lindsay |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | HIM 1990-2015 |
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