Business & Finance 2

Business & Finance

Select a publicly held company and analyze its capital-structure, applying the theories and principles found in Chapter 15 of the text.
The structure of your research paper should include:
● A preview of capital structure issues ● Business and financial risks related to capital-structure ● Modigliani and Miller’s [MM] capital-structure theory ● Criticisms of the MM model and assumptions ● Capital-structure evidence and implications ● Estimating the firm’s optimal capital-structure

A firm’s optimal capital-structure is that mix of debt and equity that maximizes the stock price. At any point in time, management has a specific target capital structure in mind, presumably the optimal one, though this target may change over time. For example, financial management may choose a 50% equity financing [stock] and 50% debt [bond] financing.

Several factors influence a firm’s capital structure, including:

● Business risk ● Tax position ● The need for financial flexibility ● Managerial conservativeness ● Growth opportunities

Business risk is the riskiness inherent in the firm’s operations if it uses no debt.

This report is intended to be a capital-structure analysis of your selected public company. Your paper is intended to be an executive summary of your analysis, and is limited to a minimum of 5–7 pages of text, excluding the title page, table of contents, graphs, charts, tables, etc.

Directions for Submitting the Final Project

Compose your research paper in a MS Word® document using 6th edition APA format and citation style and save it as Username-GB550 Assignment 1-Unit#.doc (Example: TAllen- GB550 Assignment_1- Unit 5.doc). Submit your file by selecting the Unit 5: Assignment Dropbox.