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Capital Structure Of A Company

Decent Essays

II. INTRODUCTION

Capital structure is the proportion of debt and equity in which a corporate finances its business. The capital structure of a company/firm plays a very important role in determining the value of a firm. There are various theories which propagate the ‘ideal’ capital mix / capital structure for a firm.

A corporate can finance its business mainly by 2 means i.e. debts and equity. However, the proportion of each of these could vary from business to business. A company can choose to have a structure which has 50% each of debt and equity or more of one and less of another. Capital structure is also referred to as financial leverage, which strictly means the proportion of debt or borrowed funds in the financing mix of a …show more content…

Before this point, the marginal cost of debt is less than cost of equity and after this point vice-versa. Traditional approach to capital structure advocates that there is a right combination of equity and debt in the capital structure, at which the market value of a firm is maximum. As per this approach, debt should exist in the capital structure only up to a specific point, beyond which, any increase in leverage would result in reduction in value of the firm.
It means that there exists an optimum value of debt to equity ratio at which the WACC is the lowest and the market value of the firm is the highest. Once the firm crosses that optimum value of debt to equity ratio, the cost of equity rises to give a detrimental effect to the WACC. Above the threshold, the WACC increases and market value of the firm starts a downward movement.

b. Modigliani & Miller’s Approach

Modigliani and Miller, two professors in the 1950s, studied capital-structure theory intensely. From their analysis, they developed the capital-structure irrelevance proposition. Essentially, they hypothesized that in perfect markets, it does not matter what capital structure a company uses to finance its operations. They theorized that the market value of a firm is determined by its earning power and by the risk of its underlying assets, and that its value is independent of the way it chooses to finance its

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