--%>

Effect of illegal obligations on cost of equity

If dividends paid to common stockholders are not legal obligations of a corporation, is the cost of equity zero?  Describe your answer.

Even though common stockholders do not contain a contractual claim on dividends the funds supplied by stockholders definitely contain a cost.  Equity investors are paid last and therefore they are taking the greatest risk among all of the suppliers of capital.  If the company does not get a higher rate of return onto equity funds to compensate for the higher risk taken through equity investors, the price of the stock will fall and thus the value of the firm. 

   Related Questions in Managerial Accounting

  • Q : Define Support Costs Support Costs :

    Support Costs: Costs of activities are not directly related with the production. Typical illustrations are the costs of automation support, postage, communications, process engineering, and purchasing.

  • Q : How useful is the management accounting

    Briefly define how useful is the management accounting information is?

  • Q : Human relation discuss the limitations

    discuss the limitations of human relations approaches to management

  • Q : Cash shortage/overage An income

    An income statement item that represents the difference between the actual cash amount and an accounting measure of how much cash there should be. The most common example exists in a retail situation where the cash in the cash register is compared to the register tape

  • Q : Elements of Partnership Three main

    Three main elements of Partnership: A) Carrying on of a business: • A ‘business’ is any trade, occupation or pr

  • Q : Provisional Entries Describe

    Describe Provisional Entries?

  • Q : Explain Cost Assignment Cost Assignment

    Cost Assignment: A procedure which identifies costs with activities, outputs, or another cost objects. In a wide sense, costs can be assigned to activities, processes, products, organizational divisions, and services. There are three

  • Q : VAT entry How to make a VAT entry in

    How to make a VAT entry in books including set off?

  • Q : Planned product cost and the actual cost

    A company has production facilities in several countries. Some of the products they sell are produced in stages (Raw Materials -> Pre-Assembly -> Assembly -> Finished Product) based on the technologies and materials involved (see Table 1).

    Q : Number of Partners in Partnership What

    What is the maximum and minimum number of partners in each and every type of partnership? Answer: There must be at least two persons to build a Partnership. The maxi