The structure of assets and capital of the Russian companies and their impact on the liquidity and financial stability

The article is devoted to the analysis of modern level of liquidity and financial stability of the Russian public and nonpublic companies, taking into account changes in the composition and structure of assets and capital. This research was done on data of annual financial statements of 250 public and 750 non-public joint stock companies for 2010-2013. The analysis allowed concluding that changes in the balance sheet taking place in the recent years change the usual perception of the required level of liquidity and financial stability of the Russian companies and, accordingly, the current theoretical and practical methods of analysis of these areas of a company’s financial condition need updating. Analysis of the current level of liquidity and financial stability, determined by the composition and structure of assets and capital of the Russian companies, as well as revealing their tendencies and characteristics in the context of public and non-public companies were realized. For the processing and analysis of the generated database, MS EXCEL tools were widely applied. At the public joint stock companies as compared to the non-public companies, the average share of short-term liabilities is lower (33.1% and 49.9%, respectively), and the amount of average ratios of cash and short-term investments is approximately equal (about 11%), as a result, the absolute values of Cash Ratio and Quick Ratio are much better. At the same time, non-public joint stock companies have higher values of the average shares of current assets (57.6% and 43.5%, respectively) and inventories (20.0% and 8.2%, respectively). It was substantiated that the level of liquidity and financial stability of the Russian public companies is different from the non-public ones due to the characteristics of the composition and structure of assets and capital.