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Corporate restructuring and incentive effects of leverage and taxes
Author(s) -
John Teresa A.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
managerial and decision economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.288
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1099-1468
pISSN - 0143-6570
DOI - 10.1002/mde.4090120607
Subject(s) - restructuring , leverage (statistics) , enterprise value , debt , incentive , microeconomics , monetary economics , agency cost , economics , capital structure , business , industrial organization , finance , shareholder , corporate governance , machine learning , computer science
Recent empirical studies have indicated that mergers are value enhancing, yet the theoretical aspects of merger gains have not been as well explored. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of mergers. In the model of the firm presented, outstanding risky debt gives rise to agency costs of underinvestment which are offset by the benefit of debt‐related tax shields. The trade‐off specifies the optimal leverage for a firm. Within this framework, we then consider whether and under what circumstances firm value could be enhanced by a merger. Under a fairly broad set of assumptions it is shown that most firm combinations ‘improve’ investment incentives and increase the value of debt‐related tax shields. Mergers between optimally financed firms result in a merged firm that is also optimally financed, but such mergers are not synergistic. Nevertheless, firm value may be increased if mergers are undertaken in tandem with a refinancing program to bring the combined firms from suboptimal to optimal debt levels.