Study On Factors Influencing The Debt Maturity Structure Of Listed Companies

Since the MM theorem was developed, the theory of"capital structure in an enterprise" remains the focus in the circle of finance. With the development and recreation of this theory, researchers no longer takes a company's debt to be wholly identical in nature, since great differences exist in debt structures. They gradually move from the study of selecting a basic leverage in capital structure to a more detailed study of features of debt structure. Studies concerning the issue of debt maturity structure began in the 1970s, and fruitful achievements have been got by researchers overseas. Four theoretical hypotheses mainly come into shape: the theoretical hypothesis of agency cost, signal transferring, the Maturity Matching Hypothesis and the Tax Hypothesis. In China, however, the study of debt maturity structure remains relatively undeveloped. It is still insufficient with regard to the width and depth of this study. This thesis, by means of canonical and empirical study, attempts to find the factors influencing the deciding of an enterprise debt maturity structure and to analyze the relationship between these factors and the debt maturity structure, so that evidence from the experience is available for the enterprises to make decisions in reality.This thesis makes a comprehensive review of the literature about debt maturity structure study in the world, and figures out the shortcomings of this study in China. Then 811 sample companies in 12 industries are chosen as the panel data between the year of 2000 and 2005. The methods of Kruskal Wallis H text and a multi regression analysis are adopted to analyze how the factor of industries influence the debt maturity structure of listed companies in China. Finally, with 205 sample companies in manufacturing as the subjects of this study, the concept of adjustment cost is introduced to establish a dynamic adjustment model of debt maturity structure. By means of Panel Data analysis, with the latest financial data of the listed companies in China, an empirical study about the dynamic adjustment model is made. This study shows that the debt maturity structure of the listed companies is generally on a low level and that remarkable differences regarding debt maturity structure are found between different industries and manufacturing. The differences of debt maturity structure among industries are common. They are not caused by the singularity of each industry, which, however, has caused the differences of debt maturity structure among manufacturing. Adjusting to the optimal does exist in the debt maturity structure of the listed companies in China. In this dynamic adjusting process, the adjustment cost is relatively large. The optimal debt maturity structure is most likely to be influenced by its preliminary conditions. Besides, some other factors are also significant in devising the policy of achieving optimal debt maturity structure, for instance, the enterprise's growth opportunity and size, equity maturity and real interest as well.