Corporate Tax, Cost of Debt, Cost of Equity and Capital Structure: A case study of REITs and conventional real estate firms in the UK
University of Groningen
Faculty of Economics and Business
BSc International Business
January 2013
Table of contents
1. Introduction 4
2. REITs 7
3. Literature Review 9 3.1 Capital Structure Irrelevance 9 3.2 Present Models 10
4. Data and Methodology 12 4.1 Regression 12
5. Findings and Discussion 16
6. Conclusion 20
7. Appendix 21
8. Bibliography 30
Abstract
In January 2007 the UK adopted the globally successful real estate investment trust (REIT) regime, allowing real estate firms to adopt the REIT status with the benefit of immediate exemption from
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Furthermore, I expect that REITs use relatively less debt for financing, because of the relatively higher cost of debt.
Already in 1958, Modigliani and Miller have pointed the discussion of capital structure towards the cost of debt and equity. According to their first proposition, in a world of no corporate taxes and with perfect markets, financial leverage has no effect on a firm’s value. In their second proposition, they state that the cost of equity equals a linear function defined by the required return on assets and the cost of debt (Modigliani and Miller, 1958).
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.
Nevertheless, firms have used leverage even before corporate taxes have been introduced (Maris and Elayan, 1990). This implies the existence of some market imperfections, which benefit the use of debt financing, thus enable a trade-off of the cost and benefits of debt resulting in an optimal capital structure, where marginal cost equal marginal benefits.
In general, the majority of existing research is set up by taking the security issuance choice as the dependent variable and then tests empirically for determinants based on data from one type of companies. It needs to be taken into consideration that security issue decision and capital
Nevertheless, the use of the Optimal Capital Structure (OCS) is the right techniques to be used in order to acquire the right combination of debt and equity that can maximize the
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.
Generally, firms can choose among various capital structures in order to maximize overall market value of the company. It is proposed however, that
A capital structure policy aims to balance the trade-off between the benefits of debt financing (interest tax shield) and the costs of debt financing (financial distress and agency costs). Every firm should set its target capital structure such that its cost and benefits of leverage ultimately maximise the firm’s value. Graham and Harvey asked 392 firms’ chief financial officers whether they use target debt ratios. Results show that the majority of them do, although the level of strictness of the target policy varies across different companies. Only 19% of the firms avoid target ratios, of which most are likely to be the relatively smaller firms. This clearly
Regarding cost of capital, the assumption made by Hudson Bancorp about equity investors somewhat oversimplifies the market. An increase in financial risk decreases a firm’s market value which
The course project involved developing a great depth of knowledge in analyzing capital structure, theories behind it, and its risks and issues. Before I began this assignment, I knew nothing but a few things about capital structure from previous unit weeks; however, it was not until this course’s final project that came along with opening
The advantage of debt financing is that interests paid on such debt are tax deductible. If a company has the intention of maintaining a permanent debt, the present value of the tax shield can be obtained by discounting them by the expected rate of return demanded by the investors who hold the debt (this is a perpetuity, where in reality would be the maximum possible present value for the tax shield). This tax shield value reduces the tax bill and increases the cash payment to investors, increasing the value of their investments.
There is no universal theory of the debt-equity choice, and no reason to expect one. In this essay I will critically assess the Pecking Order Theory of capital structure with reference and comparison of publicly listed companies. The pecking order theory says that the firm will borrow, rather than issuing equity, when internal cash flow is not sufficient to fund capital expenditures. This theory explains why firms prefer internal rather than external financing which is due to adverse selection, asymmetry of information, and agency costs (Frank & Goyal, 2003). The trade-off theory comes from the pecking order theory it is an unintentional outcome of companies following the pecking-order theory. This explains that firms strive to achieve an
In a world of certainty investment decision should be in line with either profit maximization or market value maximization.
The article, “ The Cost of Capital and Valuation of a Two-County Firm by Michael Adler”, attempts to extend the theory of valuation and the cost of capital when operating in a multinational corporation. In finance, financing decisions have a great importance due to the optimal capital structure, which can be created through the proper mix of finance. Adler attempts to address the issues for which multinational corporation can plan for optimal control with the restrictions of international capital movements. The ability for a corporation to perform well in the market depends on the efficiency of its capital structure. In general, the capital structure of the company may classify into debt and equity. Most companies have mix capital structure which incorporates the mixture of long-term or short-term debt and equity.
Capital structure is defined as the mix of the long-term sources of funds that a firm use. It is composed of equity, debt securities and affect long-term financing of the entity. It is made up by shareholder’s funds, long-term debt and preference share capital. The capital structure mostly focus on the proportions of debt and equity displayed in the company financial statements, especially in the balance sheet (Myers, 2001). The value of a firm can be calculated by the sum of the value of its firm’s debt and equity.
They have shown that the financial leverage doesn 't matter and the cost of capital and the value of the firm are independent of the capital structure. Modigliani-Miller methods show that there is nothing which may be called as Optimal Capital Structure - to get high valuation of the firm.
L1 - Modigliani & Miller (1958) ‘The Cost of Capital, Corporation Finance and the Theory of Investment’
This section starts with the theory of irrelevancy of capital structure. Following subsections give the overview of theories that suggest that the capital
The change in leverage is shown by comparing the data both after the tax reform and collected data within 3 years. The cumulative change in leverage indicates that the leverage of the firms might experience is declining sharply. In addition, the firms that have a large increase in tax rate might experience a more significant increase in leverage. As a result, the change in leverage after tax reforms is unlikely to happen to the differences in observed corporate or national characteristics.