I’m studying accounting and finance and I’m planning on writing my bachelors thesis on corporate finance. I just haven’t figured out a subject yet. I don’t want it to bee too theoretical. Something practical. So could you help me and give some suggestions?
Examine the impact of mark-to-market accounting on financial companies. Extremely current and practical. Many financial firms have been forced to take huge negative marks on positions based on market indices such as the ABX and the CMBX. There are plenty of people who would agree with me that these indices reflect unrealistically bearish scenarios and that the write-downs are too large. The reason is that they are some of the only liquid vehicles for this type of investment and therefore they attract massive shorts from speculators and those who need to hedge their positions. See recent WSJ articles on the subject for more info. Unfortunately, this is not merely a “GAAP/Non-GAAP” issue, because firms are being forced to raise capital in order to meet regulatory requirements. These unneccessary (or at least unnecessarily large) financings are extremely dilutive at current prices and crippling to both the companies and their existing shareholders. Edit: P.S. - I wrote a thesis-like paper on the benefits of fair-value accounting when I was in college about a decade ago. I have obviously re-thought my position (at least as it pertains to regulatory capital requirements).
Thanks for your suggestion. That would be a good idea but I don’t want to write the thesis on anything related to financial accounting. It should be about corporate finance and managerial finance.
Something I read recently had me thinking it was good fodder for research; turns out C.E.O.s were giving charitable stock donations right before their stock tanked (to max the tax deduction). There’s more detail in the article but there’s plenty that can be studied such as whether there are other contributing factors that may signal opportunities to short the stock and what commonalities there are in the financial statements for the “typical offender.” http://biz.yahoo.com/portfolio/080225/dcr94cd5f6fd76b886582a46e2ad28771fe.html?.v=4 Note that if you use this for your thesis there better be a dedication to E-Boogie in there.
I know it’s not related to corporate finance, but I started my bachelors thesis this semester and it is a study on the performance of the DJIA vs. the IMUS (dow jones islamic US index) on a risk-return basis. Lots of factors go into Islamic markets and indices, so my adviser thought it would be interesting to research and analyze, and to compare it to a conventional US index (djia).
I wrote a piece in my MBA on the use of Real Options. I found it to be a great topic that is not very well understood by most management, yet contains a great deal of strategic insight for managing an enterprise.
Most of the suggestions I have gotten this far have not been about corporate finance. So could you please give me a few more ideas.
My idea was about corporate finance. I suppose it has an accounting slant but the whole point is that the companies are having to raise capital (here’s where the corp fin comes in) because of BS accounting rules and not their underlying liquidity and capital needs. I think it is interesting. If you don’t like our suggestions, you do have another option. You can do your own homework.
capital structure, do firms really know the correct balance? Does it even matter?
I always get a charge out of people who request advice and then get finicky when others do their best to help. FYI, schweppes, most people here aren’t in or pursuing jobs in corporate finance.
I’m really sorry if I seemed finicky. I’m really thankful for all youre suggestions.
How about determining the discount rate for capital budgeting using CAPM/APT/WACC? Do you think that would be a good idea? Would employers in corporate finance value specialization in this field?
Finding the discount rate using CAPM can be done in 5 mins using Excel and WRDS, so I’d say that hardly classifies as a thesis. Perhaps you can do an event study and examine the impact of poison pills on shareholder value. I know that studies have been done to investigate 2 hypotheses: Managerial entrenchment hypothesis which predicts that the shareprice declines, whereas the shareholder interest hypothesis predicts that share price goes up.
There were some brilliant idea especially the one with real option, I said. The one about stock option ties ethic, corporate finance, accounting and most importantly corporate governonace together. The mark to market accouting, I don’t quite understand the topic but I would guess there are some risk management flavour in it… Instead…you’re asking us about determining discount rate for capital budgeting using CAPM/APT? It’s been discussed over and over in academic literature… what exactly do you expect people to find out from your thesis that is not already in other literature?
I’m kind of interested in reading Tobias’ forthcoming paper on mark-to-market accounting. IMHO, coporate America made the mark-to-market bed by all kinds of abusive accounting practices. If they don’t like it, disclose so much stuff that we won’t care about how they account for it.
HydrogenRainbow Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Finding the discount rate using CAPM can be done > in 5 mins using Excel and WRDS, so I’d say that > hardly classifies as a thesis. takumi Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > It’s been discussed over and over in > academic literature… what exactly do you expect > people to find out from your thesis that is not > already in other literature? First of all aren’t these two comments contradictory? Second of all it’s just a bachelors thesis so I’m not even supposed to come up with something completely new. And haven’t real options also been discussed over and over again?
impact of exchanges consolidation on coporate fin. or smth to that effect - pretty current
what about describing culture influence on the corporations and how it results in their finances structure? It is relevant enough in aspect of globalization.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you appear to be about twelve years too late with your suggestion.
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