Corporate Securities Case Study

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Security, in business economics, written evidence of ownership conferring the right to receive property not currently in possession of the holder. The most common types of securities are stocks and bonds, of which there are many particular kinds designed to meet specialized needs. This article deals mainly with the buying and selling of securities issued by private corporations. (The securities issued by governments are discussed in the article government economic policy.)

Types of corporate securities
Corporations create two kinds of securities: bonds, representing debt, and stocks, representing ownership or equity interest in their operations. (In Great Britain, the term stock ordinarily refers to a loan, whereas the equity segment is called …show more content…

One of the most important of these is the convertible bond, which can be exchanged for common shares at specified prices that may gradually rise over time. Such a bond may be used as a financing device to obtain funds at a low interest rate during the initial stages of a project, when income is likely to be low, and encourage conversion of the debt to stock as earnings rise. A convertible bond may also prove appealing during periods of market uncertainty, when investors obtain the price protection afforded by the bond segment without materially sacrificing possible gains provided by the stock feature; if the price of such a bond momentarily falls below its common-stock equivalent, persons who seek to profit by differentials in equivalent securities will buy the undervalued bond and sell the overvalued stock, effecting delivery on the stock by borrowing the required number of shares (selling short) and eventually converting the bonds in order to obtain the shares to return to the lender.
Another of the hybrid types is the income bond, which has a fixed maturity but on which interest is paid only if it is earned. These bonds developed in the United Statesout of railroad reorganizations, when investors holding defaulted bonds were willing to accept an income obligation in exchange for their own securities because of its bond form; the issuer for his part was less vulnerable to the danger of another bankruptcy …show more content…

Dividends on preferred stock usually are paid at a fixed rate and are often cumulated in the event the corporation finds it necessary to omit a distribution. In the latter circumstance the full deficiency must be cleared before payments may be made on the common shares. Participating preferred stock, in addition to stipulated dividends, receives a share of whatever earnings are paid to the common stock. Participation is usually resorted to as an inducement to investors when the corporation is financially weak. Although a preferred issue has no maturity date, it may be given redemption terms much like those of a bond, including a conversion privilege and a sinking fund. Preferred stockholders may or may not be allowed to vote equally with common stockholders on some or all propositions or more characteristically may vote only upon the occurrence of some prescribed condition, such as the default of a specified number of dividend

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