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Homework answers / question archive / Q)Consider the following hypothetical statement from corporate managers ‘Shareholders will punish the company when we have made bad capital budgeting decisions

Q)Consider the following hypothetical statement from corporate managers ‘Shareholders will punish the company when we have made bad capital budgeting decisions

Finance

Q)Consider the following hypothetical statement from corporate managers ‘Shareholders will punish the company when we have made bad capital budgeting decisions.’

Based on your knowledge of market efficiency, as you will agree with the statement! Please justify your answer with theories and empirical evidence. The word count limit for answering this question is 800 words.

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Firstly, in order to understand, you must know about the market efficiency,

According to FAMA, there exist three levels of market efficiency:-

(i) Weak form efficiency – Price reflect all information found in the record of past prices and volumes.

(ii) Semi – Strong efficiency – Price reflect not only all information found in the record of past prices and volumes but also all other publicly available information.

(iii) Strong form efficiency – Price reflect all available information public as well as private.

Secondly you need to know about the capital budgeting decisions, these are the investment decisions which a company makes so as to make the investment. These are the long term decisions, like for instance whether to go for a particular project or not, whether to buy a product or make it yourself or whether to buy a machinery or not.

Now all these decisions are judged by calculating the Net Present Value, which is the difference between Present value of cash inflow and present value of cash outflow. If difference is positive, then we should go for the investment decision otherwise not.

Now in case the decision comes out to be not fruitful, then it will ultimately impact the shareholders in a way that they bears a residual interest in the Company. Debt will not get affected in any case, as they bears a fixed interest and is a financial liability. But payment for the equity is the last resort. Now in case the decision came out to be wrong, then the direct impact of such would be upon the shareholders. They would not be willing to invest in such a company and would punish the company by selling the shares, this would ultimately impact the shareholders as price of the shares would fall.

Now linking the above analysis with the market efficiency, we know that the capital budgeting decision is not a public decision and else is a private decision, public doesn't have any information regarding this, as they know about the financials only as that is the only public information, for instance, Balance sheet, statement of profit and loss, cash flow statement, Statement of changes in equity etc. Public have nothing to do with the capital budgeting decision.

Under strong form of market efficiency, capital budgeting decision would directly impact the share price as it reflect both public and private information.

Semi strong will not impact the share price, as it reflects the past information and other publicly available information. Now capital budgeting decision not being the publicly available information, hence will not impact the price.

Weak form of market efficiency, also since it reflect information found in past record and prices will not impact the price.

Note- Answer of weak form and semi strong form of market efficiency is based upon the assumption that in past no such capital budgeting decision has been made, that's why it is not found in the record of past prices and volumes.