Question 143 bond pricing, zero coupon bond, term structure of interest rates, forward interest rate
An Australian company just issued two bonds:
- A 6-month zero coupon bond at a yield of 6% pa, and
- A 12 month zero coupon bond at a yield of 7% pa.
What is the company's forward rate from 6 to 12 months? Give your answer as an APR compounding every 6 months, which is how the above bond yields are quoted.
Question 398 financial distress, capital raising, leverage, capital structure, NPV
A levered firm has zero-coupon bonds which mature in one year and have a combined face value of $9.9m.
Investors are risk-neutral and therefore all debt and equity holders demand the same required return of 10% pa.
In one year the firm's assets will be worth:
- $13.2m with probability 0.5 in the good state of the world, or
- $6.6m with probability 0.5 in the bad state of the world.
A new project presents itself which requires an investment of $2m and will provide a certain cash flow of $3.3m in one year.
The firm doesn't have any excess cash to make the initial $2m investment, but the funds can be raised from shareholders through a fairly priced rights issue. Ignore all transaction costs.
Should shareholders vote to proceed with the project and equity raising? What will be the gain in shareholder wealth if they decide to proceed?
Question 448 franking credit, personal tax on dividends, imputation tax system
A small private company has a single shareholder. This year the firm earned a $100 profit before tax. All of the firm's after tax profits will be paid out as dividends to the owner.
The corporate tax rate is 30% and the sole shareholder's personal marginal tax rate is 45%.
The Australian imputation tax system applies because the company generates all of its income in Australia and pays corporate tax to the Australian Tax Office. Therefore all of the company's dividends are fully franked. The sole shareholder is an Australian for tax purposes and can therefore use the franking credits to offset his personal income tax liability.
What will be the personal tax payable by the shareholder and the corporate tax payable by the company?
Question 488 income and capital returns, payout policy, payout ratio, DDM
Two companies BigDiv and ZeroDiv are exactly the same except for their dividend payouts.
BigDiv pays large dividends and ZeroDiv doesn't pay any dividends.
Currently the two firms have the same earnings, assets, number of shares, share price, expected total return and risk.
Assume a perfect world with no taxes, no transaction costs, no asymmetric information and that all assets including business projects are fairly priced and therefore zero-NPV.
All things remaining equal, which of the following statements is NOT correct?
Question 790 mean and median returns, return distribution, arithmetic and geometric averages, continuously compounding rate, log-normal distribution, VaR, confidence interval
A risk manager has identified that their hedge fund’s continuously compounded portfolio returns are normally distributed with a mean of 10% pa and a standard deviation of 30% pa. The hedge fund’s portfolio is currently valued at $100 million. Assume that there is no estimation error in these figures and that the normal cumulative density function at 1.644853627 is 95%.
Which of the following statements is NOT correct? All answers are rounded to the nearest dollar.
Question 924 foreign exchange rate, forward foreign exchange rate, arbitrage, forward interest rate, no explanation
Suppose that the yield curve in the United States of America and Australia is flat and that the current:
- USD federal funds rate is 1% pa;
- AUD cash rate is 1.5% pa;
- Spot AUD exchange rate is 1 USD per AUD;
- One year forward AUD exchange rate is 0.97 USD per AUD.
You suspect that there’s an arbitrage opportunity.
Which one of the following statements about the potential arbitrage opportunity is NOT correct?
Which of the following statements about an asset’s standard deviation of returns is NOT correct? All other things remaining equal, the higher the asset’s standard deviation of returns:
Question 950 future, backwardation
Question 974 foreign exchange rate, monetary policy, no explanation
Suppose the market expects the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to increase their short term interest rate by 15 basis points at their next meeting. The current short term interest rate is -0.1% pa and the exchange rate is 100 JPY per USD.
As expected, the BoJ announce that they will increase short term interest rate by 15 basis points.
What do you expect to happen to Japan’s exchange rate on the day when the announcement is made? The Japanese Yen (JPY) is likely to: