企业财务：财务管理外文翻译.docVIP

外文翻译 Corporate Finance: Financial Control Material Source: Author:E. H. Schein Corporate finance is concerned with financial decisions made by corporations. These decisions can be grouped easily into two major categories: investment decisions and financing decisions. Regarding the first major decisions a firm must take, each company needs real assets (tangible and intangible) to carry on its business and keep its operations going. How much a firm should invest and what specific assets a firm should invest in are the typical questions related to investment decisions. Investment decisions, then, determine the total amount of assets held by a company and the composition of these assets. The economic evaluation of investment projects aims at orienting corporations’ choices connected to their asset allocation process. This process that leads a company to allocate its capital to investment proposals whose benefits are to be realized in the future is generally referred to as capital budgeting. All the assets we mentioned above are to be paid for. To raise the money necessary to their investments policy, corporations issue securities on financial markets. These financial assets have value since they represent claims on companies’ real assets. Securities issued by corporations include not only shares of stock but also bonds, bank loans, lease obligations, and any other form of financing. How the cash required for investments should be obtained is the answer that financing decisions must give. Financing decision, in fact, are concerned with determining the best mix of financial sources in the form of equity and debts. In other words, financing decisions define the total amount and the composition of a company’s capital structure. The definition of capital structure referred to is that which takes into account the explicitly costly forms of financing raised from the company’s investors. For sake of simplicity, they are divided into financial debts and equity without dwelling