Читать книгу Corporate Finance For Dummies - Michael Taillard - Страница 63

When a corporation needs money, one of the primary options it has available is to borrow some. Now, I’m not talking about borrowing a few hundred bucks from a friend or family member; I’m talking about borrowing an amount of money sufficient enough to fund the startup of a new company, the expansion of an existing company, the purchase of expensive equipment, or the acquisition of another company. Loan requests are very much defined by the numbers being presented to lenders. How much are you asking, what percentage of the total are you providing yourself, what is the business's history of revenues, how likely are you to repay the debt, and so on. The story you tell here must be entirely nonfiction, written strictly in numbers.

Regardless of what the money’s for, when a corporation wants a loan, it starts by putting together a proposal. For startup companies, this proposal comes in the form of a business plan, but anytime a corporation receives a loan significant enough to influence the capital structure of the company (not lines of credit), it has to present a proposal for the use of the funds. This proposal includes financial information about the corporation, including detailed predictions for future financial well-being, called projections, that prove the company can pay back the loan on time and without risk of default. For more information about business plans, which you can use in many forms of proposals, you may want to read Business Plans For Dummies (Wiley Publishing, Inc.) by Paul Tiffany, PhD, Steven D. Peterson, PhD, and Colin Barrow.

The following sections explain what a corporation must do after its proposal is ready to go, including where to go to ask for money and how to evaluate the worth of a loan and its terms.