债务融资可以采取银行贷款或公司债券的形式。债务必须在一定时期内返还给投资者，通常是有利息的。债务和利息可以优先于破产中的权益。因为债务是基于公司和投资者之间的合同，所以他们被当作会计目的的费用，因此可以扣除。
股权融资投资是指投资者以公司资金换取股份的所有权。股权融资对公司风险较小，因为它没有义务偿还投资资金。通过这种投资方式给投资者带来的好处是，他将在公司的业务中拥有一系列权利。但其弊端也显而易见，其债权没有税收优势，股利支付没有优先于破产。
混合安全是一种兼有债务融资和股权融资特征的第三种融资方式。混合证券的一个常见例子是可转换优先股，投资者必须在特定的未来日期以特定的转换率将证券转换成相关股票。
莫迪利亚尼和米勒（1958）率先全面论证了企业价值与资本结构的关系。根据MM定理，在一个假设的情况下，没有税收，没有破产成本，没有代理成本，在一个有效的市场中，融资组合与公司价值无关。
债务融资的优势主要体现在两个方面：税收减免和对管理的约束。如上所述，由于债务的利息应在公司缴税之前支付，因此可以免税。这实际上节省税前扣除支付1000万美元的利息的投资者对于公司的钱将支付投资者1000万美元股息将花费200万美元的税收不产生税收（假设企业所得税是20%）（梅齐亚纳，2013）。
这是说，股权是一种缓冲而债务是一把双刃剑”（Damodaran，2013）。现代企业结构中的管理与所有权分离往往会造成管理层倾向于将自身利益优先于股东利益的问题。债务融资不会遇到这样的代理冲突，因为支付利息和偿还贷款属于管理层的责任，如果他们不能及时付款，公司就有被宣布破产的危险。从这个意义上说，董事会有更多的动力来管理公司债务。
当公司不能按时偿还债务时，它就面临破产的危险。破产费用将包括法律成本、人力成本和未来业务损失，这可能会导致相当高的数额。从这个意义上说，从事未来业务不确定性或从事高风险业务的公司在资本结构上的债务融资要少一些。
代理成本指的是管理层可能从贷款中使用贷款的问题。
金融 assignment 代写:公司的资本结构
According to Fridson and Alvarez (2002), the capital structure of a company is the extent to which the company finances its business through debt or equity, which is also known as leverage or gearing. When deciding whether to invest in a particular company, capital structure is a measurement to evaluate whether the company has a healthy financial condition. This chapter purports to understand the factors the decision makers consider when structuring the funding of the company and how the capital structure would give the potential investors signals about the financial fitness of the company.
4.2 General review about how a firm structures its financing, the trade of debt and equity.
4.2.1 Debt Financing and Equity Financing
Debt financing can take the form of bank loan or corporate bonds. The Debts have to be repaid to the investor after a certain period of time, usually with interest. Debt and its interests can take priority over equity in bankruptcy. And because debts are based on contracts between the firm and its investors, they are treated as expense for accounting purposes and therefore text deductible.
Investment by equity financing means that the investor gives the firm money in exchange for the ownership of shares in the company. Equity financing is less risky for the firm because it doesn’t have the obligation to repay the money invested. Advantage for the investor through this way of investment is that he would have a set of rights in the business of the firm. But the disadvantage is obvious too, its claim does not have tax advantage and the payment of dividends does not have priority in bankruptcy.
Hybrid security serves as a third type of financing method, which embraces characteristics of both debt financing and equity financing. The common example of hybrid securities would be convertible preferred stock holding which the investor would have to option of converting the securities into underlying shares on a specified future date at a particular conversion rate.
4.2.2 Theories about the relation between value of the firm and its capital structure
4.2.2.1 The MM theorem
Modigliani and Miller (1958) were the first to give out a comprehensive demonstration of the relation between the value of the firm and its capital structure. According to the MM theorem, in a hypothetical situation, where there are no taxes, no bankruptcy costs, and no agency costs and in an efficient market, the financing mix is irrelevant to the value of the company.
Although the hypothetical scenario of the MM theorem won’t exist in the real world, and the theorem did receive a lot of criticism about its applicability in the real world, it did set out a framework for finding the factors affecting the capital structure decision.
4.2.2.2 The debt-equity trade off
Advantages of financing through debts are mainly in two aspects: tax deduction and adding discipline to the management. As described above, because the interest of the debts should be paid before the firm is taxed, it is tax deductible. This tax deduction in effect saves money for the company for paying $10 million interest to the investor will generate no tax while paying the investor $10 million dividend will cost $ 2 million tax (assuming that the corporate tax is 20%) (Meziane, 2013).
It is said that ‘equity is a cushion while debt is a sword’ (Damodaran, 2013). The separation of management and ownership in the modern corporation structure tend to create the problem that the managements tend to prioritize their own interest over that of the shareholders’. Debt financing won’t come across such agency conflicts because the payment of interest and paying back the loan falls within the responsibilities of the management and if they fail to make prompt payment, the company is at risk of being declared bankrupt. In this sense, the directors will have more incentive to manage the company debts well.
Of course, there are considerable disadvantages of using debt as a financing method, which are in the form of bankruptcy cost, agency cost and loss of future financing flexibility (Jonathan et al. 2010).
