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Question 99 capital structure, interest tax shield, Miller and Modigliani, trade off theory of capital structure

A firm changes its capital structure by issuing a large amount of debt and using the funds to repurchase shares. Its assets are unchanged.

Assume that:

The firm and individual investors can borrow at the same rate and have the same tax rates.
The firm's debt and shares are fairly priced and the shares are repurchased at the market price, not at a premium.
There are no market frictions relating to debt such as asymmetric information or transaction costs.
Shareholders wealth is measured in terms of utiliity. Shareholders are wealth-maximising and risk-averse. They have a preferred level of overall leverage. Before the firm's capital restructure all shareholders were optimally levered.

According to Miller and Modigliani's theory, which statement is correct?

(a) The firm's share price and shareholder wealth will both decrease. This is because the firm will have more debt and therefore more risk so the discount rate applied to its cash flows will be higher, decreasing the value of the firm and therefore the value of the firm's equity and share price.

(b) The firm's share price and shareholder wealth will both increase. This is because the firm will have more debt which will amplify the returns of equity investors. This will mean that returns on equity can be much higher and investors will pay a premium for this, leading to an increase in the stock price.

(c) The firm's share price and shareholder wealth will both increase since it has more debt and therefore more tax shields.

(d) The firm's share price will increase due to the higher value of tax shields. But shareholder wealth will remain unchanged because capital structure is irrelevant when investors can use home-made leverage to create tax-shields themselves.

(e) The firm's share price and shareholder wealth will both increase. This is because the cost of debt is cheaper than equity, leading to a lower (before and after tax) WACC. This lower WACC will lead to a higher value of the firm and a higher share price.

Question 171 DDM, income and capital returns

The following is the Dividend Discount Model used to price stocks:

### p_0=\frac{d_1}{r-g} ###

Which of the following statements about the Dividend Discount Model is NOT correct?

Question 316 foreign exchange rate, American and European terms

Question 348 PE ratio, Multiples valuation

Estimate the US bank JP Morgan's share price using a price earnings (PE) multiples approach with the following assumptions and figures only:

The major US banks JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Citi Group (C) and Wells Fargo (WFC) are comparable companies;
JP Morgan Chase's historical earnings per share (EPS) is $4.37;
Citi Group's share price is $50.05 and historical EPS is $4.26;
Wells Fargo's share price is $48.98 and historical EPS is $3.89.

Note: Figures sourced from Google Finance on 24 March 2014.

Question 397 financial distress, leverage, capital structure, NPV

A levered firm has a market value of assets of $10m. Its debt is all comprised of 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.

Therefore the current market capitalisation of debt ##(D_0)## is $9m and equity ##(E_0)## is $1m.

A new project presents itself which requires an investment of $2m and will provide a:

$6.6m cash flow with probability 0.5 in the good state of the world, and a
-$4.4m (notice the negative sign) cash flow with probability 0.5 in the bad state of the world.

The project can be funded using the company's excess cash, no debt or equity raisings are required.

What would be the new market capitalisation of equity ##(E_\text{0, with project})## if shareholders vote to proceed with the project, and therefore should shareholders proceed with the project?

Question 495 risk, accounting ratio, no explanation

High risk firms in danger of bankruptcy tend to have:

Question 659 APR, effective rate, effective rate conversion, no explanation

A home loan company advertises an interest rate of 9% pa, payable monthly. Which of the following statements about the interest rate is NOT correct? All rates are given with an accuracy of 4 decimal places.

Question 792 mean and median returns, return distribution, arithmetic and geometric averages, continuously compounding rate, log-normal distribution, confidence interval

A risk manager has identified that their investment fund’s continuously compounded portfolio returns are normally distributed with a mean of 10% pa and a standard deviation of 40% pa. The fund’s portfolio is currently valued at $1 million. Assume that there is no estimation error in the above figures. To simplify your calculations, all answers below use 2.33 as an approximation for the normal inverse cumulative density function at 99%. All answers are rounded to the nearest dollar. Assume one month is 1/12 of a year. Which of the following statements is NOT correct?

Question 800 leverage, portfolio return, risk, portfolio risk, capital structure, no explanation

Which of the following assets would you expect to have the highest required rate of return? All values are current market values.

Question 835 VaR, no explanation

A company has a 95% daily Value at Risk (VaR) of $1 million. The units of this VaR are in: