The Research On Debt Maturity Structure Of Chinese Listed Companies

According to MM theory, if there is no transaction cost and the total cash flow from the company to its creditors and shareholders will not be affected by capital structure choice, the capital structure choice will not influence the company's value, that is, capital structure choice is neutral. It can ratiocinate that under the same hypothesis the debt maturity structure will also not influence the company's value. However, the existence of revenue duty, bankruptcy costs, agency costs and interest rate uncertainty break down a series of presuppositions of MM theory, the choice of debt maturity structure is no more neutral and there is an optimal debt maturity structure to maximize the company's value.From the existed literatures we can find that most of them look all kinds of debt homogenous and hereby investigate how a company should choose between debt and equity to maximize the company's value. In fact, when a company wants to issue debt, it should determine not only the magnitude but also the maturity, seniority, mortgage,convertibility and callability, etc. The literatures overseas about debt maturity structure began at 1970s and were much later than typical capital structure research. The domestic literatures are even later and can be counted on one's fingers. Therefore, the research of debt maturity structure has academic and practical meaning.Firstly, this dissertation will review the existed literatures about debt maturity structure. Based on the detailed research, the dissertation will show that every academic model has its own conditions and emphasizes different costs so that different optimal financing strategy choice is educed according to these different models. Thereby the research of Chinese listed companies'debt maturity structure should be associated with China's background.Secondly, the dissertation will apply descriptive statistics, parametric and non-parametric test to systematically analyse the features of Chinese listed companies'debt financing structure. Following the cognitive rules, this dissertation will further investigate the causation of such features from China's background such as economic system, law and finance circumstance, etc.Thirdly, this dissertation will examine the determinants of corporate debt maturity while taking into account the interdependent relation between maturity and leverage. The dissertation will do this by estimating a simultaneous-equations model on debt maturity and leverage for a sample of Chinese listed companies. To compare with previous studies, the dissertation will also estimate a single-equation model on debt maturity using OLS. Combined with Chinese listed companies'background, this dissertation will further examine how corporate governance structure affecting the debt maturity choice.Finally, the author will sum up the whole dissertation on the basis of previous chapters. The author will also give suggestions for optimizing debt maturity structure of Chinese listed companies, relevant policies making by related government departments, financial policy making of Chinese listed companies and design of corporate governance structure.