保险业：橄榄枝伸向民间资本

民间投资在保险领域似乎更受青睐。如果要梳理有关保险领域鼓励民间资本进入的政策,可以回溯到很多年之前。不过,2012年3月28日可看作是一个新的起点。这一天,国务院召开常务会议,决定设立温州市金融综合改革试验区。国务院在部署温州金融改革12项任务时提出,拓宽保险服务领域,创新发展服务于专业市场和产业集群的保险产品,鼓励和支持商业保险参与社会保障体系建设。     

当金融资本爱上艺术

2007年以来,金融机构日益成为艺术品市场投资的主体,原来的收藏家或行家主体地位被边缘化,金融机构的市场份额越来越大．导致艺术品被炒高炒低．易产生金融风险。我们必须高度警惕艺术品金融化的影响风险,警惕过度热潮带来的巨大投资风险泡沫。     

银保业务的“分合”之道

近些年,欧美银行业的综合经营趋势下降,而我国银行业的综合经营却热情高涨。有必要深入分析欧美银行业剥离保险业务的动因,以供日后借鉴。     

放活民间资本

站在2012年新的起点,很多人都未曾忘记过民间借贷的那次“疯狂”：从温州多家企业老板跑路事件、中小企业资金链条断裂,到鄂尔多斯出现民间借贷危机、全民放贷顿时谣言四起,再到温州政府一揽子救市政策、民间金融改革试点的推进……风平浪静之后,这场民间债务风波给温州及全国各地打上了一个大问号——如何把地下资金通过政策引导到地上来。     

FINANCING INNOVATIONS AND CAPITAL STRUCTURE CHOICES

The last two decades have seen a stream of innovation in financial markets, especially in corporate bonds. Some of these innovations—notably, hybrid debt—have provided firms with more flexibility in designing cash flows on borrowings, allowing them to match cash flows on financing more closely to cash flows on assets. In so doing, the use of such innovative securities has increased corporate debt capacity and hence firm value.
But if such changes have been mostly good news for corporate treasurers, the relentless torrent of innovation has sometimes resulted in firms issuing these new securities for the wrong reasons. Some have done so to take advantage of loopholes in the way ratings agencies and regulatory agencies define debt and equity—and others to exploit perceived pricing anomalies—without considering the effect of such securities on the firm's overall risk profile. In this context, it is worth noting that as corporate bonds have become more complex, investment bankers have made themselves indispensable to the process by providing pricing as well as selling support. This article aims to help managers distinguish when financing with complex securities serves their company's interests, and when it can end up hurting them.     

为民间资本进入银行业铺路

从“旧36条”到“新36条”,再到“新36条”实施细则,多年来,我国对鼓励民间资本进入金融业腱康发展的探索步伐从未停止过。     

绿色产业离不开资本市场培植

治理环境污染、建设美丽中国,已成为国人关注的话题和国家发展的目标。发展绿色经济、循环经济,通过经济发展方式的转型和产业结构的调整,实现环境效益和经济效益的协调发展,也已成为实现中国梦的主要途径和共识。绿色经济的建设更离不开绿色金     

BANK OF AMERICA ROUNDTABLE ON THE LINK BETWEEN CAPITAL STRUCTURE AND SHAREHOLDER VALUE

A number of popular business magazines have recently run cover stories describing the “return of leverage.” Although full of interesting details about individual leveraged deals and the investment bankers who put them together, they are largely silent on several issues of economic importance: Why is this happening now? What are the most important benefits as well as costs of debt financing? Is there such a thing as a value-maximizing, or “optimal,” capital structure for public corporations? No financial economist has thought and written as much about corporate capital structure and its relationship to shareholder value and corporate governance as Harvard professor Michael Jensen. The first economist to see the value-adding potential of LBOs in the 1980s, he was also the first to identify the source of the problems with the late-'80s deals. In this roundtable discussion, Professor Jensen explores the “real” effects of corporate financial policies on managerial decision-making and shareholder value with a distinguished group of corporate executives and financial advisors.     

诚信是资本市场立命之本

经过二十年的飞速发展,中国资本市场发生了深刻的变化,先后构建了主板,中小板,创业板,产权交易市场等多种交易平台,股市在资源配置,价格发现等方面的功能得到了更有效的发挥。尤其是2005年5月股份制改革之后,一系列长期困扰资本市场发展的体制性障碍被逐渐破除,中国股市进入了全流通时代。短短几年的时间里,A股流通市值增加了四倍多,上市公司增加至两千多家。可以说,我国已初步建立了按照市场规律运行的市场,具备了发展多层次资本市场的实力。     

COSTING NEEDS AND PRACTICES IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT: THE POTENTIAL FOR ABC IN THE NHS

This pisper explores the potential application of ABC in a situation of rapid change - the introduction of markets for health care in the UK. This changing environment places pressures on hospital units to refine their costing methods for product costing, budget construction and the pursuit of efficiency. These are areas of management accounting for which activity-based costing (ABC) has been proposed as a refinement to traditional costings. The merits of the ABC approach were examined by conducting four case studies of acute hospitatls. The results cast doubt on the benefits to be gained from ABC in product costing, but revealed potential applications in its wider roles of cost reduction and budget construction.     

CREATING VALUE IN THE OIL INDUSTRY

In contrast with current thinking that conglomerates are inefficient, this article begins by presenting arguments in favor of the size and structure of the large integrated oil companies, also known as "the supermajors." Among the advantages are tax efficiency, information flow, political and technological know-how, broad supplier and customer relationships, scale economies, cross-business economies of scope, brand power, and the ability to coordinate strategic initiatives across businesses. These advantages all translate into a lower cost of capital.
One problem, however, is that this lower cost of capital does not seem to be reflected in the target returns on capital currently set by the supermajors. Observing that the financial goal of a corporation is to maximize not its return on capital but rather the net present value of expected future cash flows and earnings, the authors argue that the majors need to make two major changes to current practice. First, their investment hurdle rates should be reduced from their current level of 14–15% to the weighted average cost of capital, which is estimated to run about 8–9%. Second, the actual returns on capital reported in published accounts are largely meaningless; and when evaluating new investments and existing operations alike, the companies must find an annual performance measure that better reflects the economic realities of the business. This paper recommends use of a performance measurement framework based on economic profit that should serve two critical purposes: it will encourage managers to undertake all value-increasing projects (not just those that will maintain or increase reported return on capital), and it will help the companies communicate their strategy and results to the investment community.     

ASSESSING CAPITAL CHARGING IN THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

Capital charging was introduced into the NHS in 1991, as one of the components of the internal market reforms. Having established context and rationale, this article reviews published surveys of capital charging. It then reports the results of a questionnaire survey conducted in 1994 which probed the views of finance and estates staff in NHS provider units in Scotland as to the efficacy and effects ofcapital charging. Strong support for the principle of capital charging was found, despite considerable evidence of implementation difficulties which had differentially impacted upon Health Boards. Respondents expected that the effects of capital charging would be lower investment and higher disposals, thus leading to a smaller NHS estate.