Capital Structure Theory – Modigliani Miller Proposition

Capital Structure Decision in Corporate  Finance

The corporate finance is a specific area of finance dealing with the financial decisions corporations make and the tools as well as analysis used to make these decisions. The discipline as a whole may be divided among long-term and short-term decisions and techniques with the primary goal being maximizing corporate value while managing the firm’s financial risks. Capital investment decisions are long-term choices that investment with equity or debt, and the short-term decisions deals with the balance of current assets and current liabilities which is managing cash, inventories, and short-term borrowing and lending. Corporate finance can be defined as the theory, process and techniques that corporations use to make the investing, financing and dividend decisions that ultimately contribute to maximizing corporate value.… Read the rest

Ethics in Financial Reporting

Integrity is of utmost importance for a successful career in business and finance in the long run. Some believe that the world of finance lacks ethical considerations. Whereas the truth is that such issues are prevalent in all areas of business.

The business environment in much of the world is reeling from the revelation of several financial scandals in the past few years. The optimism of the turn of the century has been replaced by scepticism and distrust. It will be discussed as to how we landed ourselves in this situation, what is being done to correct it, and what the future holds for us.… Read the rest

Management Accounting Best Practices – Cost Allocation

Cost allocation is the process of identifying and assigning the costs of services necessary for the operation of a business or other type of entity. Unlike a cost rating, the allocation is less concerned with the actual amount of the cost, and more concerned with allocating or assigning the cost to the correct unit within the organization. From this perspective, cost allocation can be seen as a tool that helps track all costs associated with the ongoing operation more efficiently, since each cost is associated with specific departments or groups of departments within the organization.

A simple example of cost allocation would be the wages or salary of an employee assigned to work in a specific department.… Read the rest

Qualitative Characteristics of Financial Information

Qualitative characteristics are the attributes that make financial  information  useful to users.  The qualitative characteristics of financial information can be categorized as fundamental (relevance and faithful representation) or enhancing (comparability, verifiability, timeliness and understandability) based on how they influence the usefulness of financial information.

Fundamental Qualitative Characteristics  of Financial Information 1. Relevance

Relevant financial reporting information means the ability of users (shareholder) to make a difference in their decision. Information regarding to economic phenomenon will help the users make a difference decision if it included predictive value and confirmatory value.

  1. Predictive Value: Information has predictive value if the value can be useful to the shareholder in predicting certain things that is related to future.
Read the rest

Importance of Audit Independence for Stakeholders

The importance of audit independence can be categorized into four reasons: Firstly, audit independence can hold the public confidence and avoid interest conflicts; Secondly, audit independence can help auditors to provide high quality financial report and avoid scandals like ‘Enron bomb’; Thirdly, the development of no-audit services make it more difficult but more important to maintain audit independence; Lastly, audit independence can improve the quality of audit and it can assist managers to make strategy formulations.

Stakeholders make economic decisions by taking advantage of financial reports. Whether those reports are related and reliable are questions. Audit can help to solve this problem.… Read the rest

Stakeholder Capitalism Model

Stakeholder capitalism model says that company should make decisions by taking into account the interests of all the stakeholders in the firm. Stakeholders include all individuals or groups who can significantly affect the welfare of the firm in the aspects of not only the financial claimants, but also employees, management, customers, local community, supply chain members, local or national government and creditors. One of the important variables in this model is considering all stakeholders’ interest as they are people who support and sustain the company.

In the stakeholder capitalism model, it is argued that firms should pay attention to all their supporters that can affect the firm.… Read the rest