Knowledge that Transforms

This paper investigates whether merger bids have an impact on the wealth of the participating firms' bondholders and stockholders. Monthly and daily bond and stock returns are calculated relative to the announcement date of a merger bid for a sample of conglomerate mergers. The results show that while the stockholders of target firms gain from a merger bid, no other securityholders either gain or lose. To provide direct evidence on the existence of “diversification effects” and “incentive effects,” we test whether the bondholders' returns are dependent upon the correlation between the returns of the merging firms and whether the size of the bondholders' and stockholders' returns in individual mergers are correlated. The results are consistent with a capital market that efficiently resolves conflicts of interest between stockholders and bondholders.

Firms raise debt and equity capital to finance a positive net present value project in perfectly competitive capital markets; firm insiders know the function generating the random firm cash flow but potential capital suppliers do not. Taking into account the incentives of insiders to misrepresent their firm type, capital suppliers attempt to design financing mixes of debt and equity that eliminate the adverse incentives of insiders and correctly price securities. Necessary conditions for a costless separating equilibrium are developed to show that the amount of debt used by a firm is monotonically related to its unobservable true value.

Part I: INTRODUCTION. 1. The Role and Objective of Financial Management. 2. The Domestic and International Financial Marketplace. 3. Evaluation of Financial Performance. 4. Financial Planning and Forecasting. Part II: DETERMINANTS OF VALUATION. 5. The Time Value of Money. 6. Fixed Income Securities: Characteristics and Valuation. 7. Common Stock: Characteristics, Valuation, and Issuance. 8. Analysis of Risk and Return. Part III: THE CAPITAL INVESTMENT DECISION. 9. Capital Budgeting and Cash Flow Analysis. 10. Capital Budgeting: Decision Criteria and Real Option Considerations. 11. Capital Budgeting and Risk. Part IV: THE COST OF CAPITAL, CAPITAL STRUCTURE, AND DIVIDEND POLICY. 12. The Cost of Capital. 13. Capital Structure Concepts. 14. Capital Structure Management in Practice. 15. Dividend Policy. Part V: WORKING CAPITAL MANAGEMENT. 16. Working Capital Policy and Short-Term Financing. 17. The Management of Cash and Marketable Securities. 18. The Management of Accounts Receivable and Inventories. Part VI: ADDITIONAL TOPICS IN CONTEMPORARY FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT. 19. LEASE AND INTERMEDIATE-TERM FINANCING. 20. Financing with Derivatives. 21. Risk Management. 22. International Financial Management. 23. Corporate Restructuring. Appendix 2A: Taxes. Appendix 5A: Continuous Compounding and Discounting. Appendix 9A: Depreciation. Appendix 10A: Mutually Exclusive Investments Having Unequal Lives. Appendix 14A: Breakeven Analysis. Appendix 20A: The Black-Scholes Option Pricing Model. Appendix 20B: Bond Refunding Analysis.

This paper is an empirical examination of the relation between firm value and two potential actions by entrepreneurs attempting to signal to investors information about otherwise unobservable firm features. The signals investigated are the proportion of equity ownership retained by entrepreneurs and the dividend policy of the firm; both signals are hypothesized to be positively related to firm value. Using a sample of unseasoned new equity issues, the empirical results are consistent with the entrepreneurial ownership retention hypothesis, but the dividend signaling hypothesis is rejected.

The Black‐Scholes option pricing model, modified for dividend payments, is used to calculate jointly implied stock prices and implied standard deviations. A comparison of the implied stock prices with observed stock prices reveals that the implied prices contain information regarding equilibrium stock prices that is not fully reflected in observed stock prices. The implications of this finding are discussed.