Financial Corporation Case

revolving loan (such as a large line-of-credit or a car loan), which would make it harder for them

The net of interest holds them fast, requiring them to sell their time and energies to meet the demands of creditors. They surrender their freedom, becoming slaves to their own extravagance.

The world is full of financial hardship, and American society possesses a great deal of controversy concerning lending. Unfortunately, short term lending, such as payday loans or title loans, creates a structural void within American society. According to Wikipedia, “Structural inequality is defined as a condition where one category of people are attributed an unequal status in relation to other categories of people” (wilipedia.com). When working class Americans apply for a payday, the unequal status between upper and middle class possess a bigger separation financially. The never-ending process of a short term financial fix becomes lifelong debt. Thus, middle class society becomes lower class society. Eventually, working class society will struggle to say above the poverty line. In addition to an imbalance in society classes, short term lending targets consumers who life paycheck to paycheck. In Rigging the Game by Michael Schwalbe, the author explains the reproduction of inequalities. Schwalbe discusses the different kinds of capitals human, social, and cultural (10). The three capitals unknowingly shape Americans social system. Many businesses capitalize on these capitals knowing no laws or regulation exists to stop them from capitalizing on individuals who no faults of their own were born into these unfair capitals. As a result, short term lenders possess the ability to have extremely high interest rates and outrageous fine print penalties because there is little

Increased leverage would increase the risk for the shareholder. This is due to the fact that an increased amount of debt would increase the financial return that investors expect. For example, if a company has no debt and posts better than expected earnings, the equity holder would get all of this benefit. If the company had some debt and posted better than expected earnings, the bond holders would get a fixed payment as usual, and shareholders would still enjoy increased profits; the problem arises if worse than expected profits were shown by Kelly Services. If Kelly Services had no debt and posted bad earnings, then the equity bears all the risk in that situation. However, if Kelly

To improve their goodwill and reliability; To inflate the prices of shares that would lead to the possibly increase capital; Avoiding debt covenant restrictions as the lender’s agreement states a minimum limit of term loan of cash and unpledged receivables, working capital and net worth.

Leverage can increase a firm’s expected earnings per share. An argument is that by doing so, leverage should also increase the firm’s stock price. Because BBBY

| The risks of becoming a victim of hostile acquisition and stocks speculations, causing problems with financing.

One of Citigroup’s main concerns was the risk of their exposure from holding leveraged loans. Due to the increasing risks and

If the firms funding requirements are larger than their retained earnings, they must issue debt as this is preferred to issuing equity. Based on this theory, a firm’s financing policies could be viewed as signalling management’s view of the firm’s stock value (Wang & Lin 2010).Myers and Majluf (1984) also add that if firms issued no new securities but only used its retained earning to support the investment opportunities, the information asymmetric could be resolved. This suggests that issuing equity turn out to be more expensive as asymmetric information insiders and outsiders increase. Large firms should then issue debt to avoid selling under priced securities. As the requirement for external financing increases, businesses will work down the pecking order, from safe to riskier debt, perhaps to convertible securities or preferred stock, and finally to equity as a last resort. Each firm's debt ratio therefore reflects its cumulative requirement for external financing (Myers 2001).The pecking order theory clarifies why the bulk of external financing comes from debt. It also describes why organizations that are more profitable borrow less: since their goal debt ratio is, low-in the pecking order they do not have a goal since profitable firms have more internal financing available.

From this set of problems, we can see that leverage is good for the firm. Leverage has increased the value of the firm as a whole and increased the price per share. Although the cost of debt increases the firm's risk because it increases the probability of default and bankruptcy, therefore shareholders will require higher rates of return on the equity they provide, debt also provides tax savings. And we can see that in table 4, where we calculated the total value of the firm as the pure business cash flows plus the tax savings. Another reason why debt increases firm value is the fact that it reduces WACC, because the cost of debt is generally lower than the cost of equity. Another option that shareholders can do is using homemade leverage. Shareholders should pay a premium for the shares of a levered firm when the addition of debt increases value.

For example, if the public thinks that the firm’s prospects are rosy but the managers see trouble ahead, these managers would view their debt-as well as their equity-as being overvalued. That is, the public might see the debt as nearly risk- free, whereas the mangers see a strong possibility of default.

Although the increased leverage decreases the amount of earnings available to stock holders from 496.9 million to 451.7 million for a total of 45.2 million dollars, it has a positive affect for the company’s tax structure. It actually reduces the company’s tax liability by 83 million dollars! Without the debt they have to pay 952.5 million dollars in taxes. However after an increase of 30% leverage, the new tax liability is 869.5 million dollars.

As negative aspects of debt, e.g. personal tax loss and bankruptcy costs however do exist in reality, Miller (1977) elaborates that leverage will either have no or a negative effect on the firm’s value, hence untaxed firms should favor equity.

Hypothesis 2: After the connection is established, politically connected firms become more indebted than their non-connected peers.

Household and corporations have different credit conditions; they both channel funds from savers to borrowers, this is known as the flow of funds. Funds are transferred from savers who have a surplus of credit to borrowers who have a deficit. Although both take part in saving and borrowing, households are typically the savers and businesses are typically borrowers.