Study On Determiants Of Debt Marturity Structure From Chinese Listed Companies

Company debt financing is an important financial decision-making behavior. When choosing debt financing,the company have to make a decision on its internal structure,such as debt-maturity structure,priority of the debt,the mode of debt financing,and so on.Company debt maturity structure is an important part of the debt contracts and provides rights and obligations for the creditors and debtors.So revealing the determinants of company debt maturity structure is necessary.Studies on debt maturity structure began in the 1970s,and fruitful achievements have been gotten by researchers overseas.Four mainly theoretical hypotheses come into shape:agency cost hypothesis,signal hypothesis,tax hypothesis and matching hypothesis.In China,however,the study on debt maturity structure is developed later and the literature is scarce comparatively.In this paper,by means of canonical and empirical study,the determinants of company debt maturity structure are found and the relationship between the determinants and company debt maturity structure is analyzed.Moreover,we hope to provide evidences for the companies when making decisions.Firstly,the paper makes a comprehensive review of the literature about debt maturity structure.Based on existing research and the factors in China's special institution,we make a theoretical analysis on the determinants of debt maturity structure in Chinese listed companies and divide them into three categories:industry factor,company features factors and company governance structure factors.Then the industry data between the year of 1999 and 2004 for 457 Chinese listed companies are chose and total 2742 samples are gotten. Empirical results show that industry factor is one of the important determinants for company debt maturity.Debt maturity structure for companies in different industry is significantly different.The different is caused by industry factor.Firm size,leverage ratio,liquidity and asset structure impact on debt maturity structure of Chinese listed companies significantly.Growth options,free cash flow,firm quality,information asymmetry and effective tax rate,volatility in earnings,the largest Shareholder stake,a few large of shareholders stake,managers stake,and state stake impact on debt maturity structure of China's listed companies insignificantly.Finally,the paper sums up in the conclusion,the limitations and directions of the study is also given out.