G32 - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; GoodwillReturn

Capital structure is very important, especially the decision which concern with this problem, because the profitability of a company is directly affected by such decision. The successful choice and use of capital is one of the key components of the enterprises financial strategy. This means that it is the vital to pay attention and proper care capital structure. The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between capital structure and profitability of the limited liability companies from an agricultural sector in the Czech Republic over the past six year period from 2008 to 2013. Data was obtained and processed from the database of enterprises of Albertina and was analyzed by using descriptive statistics, i.e. mean, median, variation range, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, skewness, kurtosis, and correlation analysis to find out the association between the variables. The results of this paper describe a small negative correlation between the debt ratios and profitability ratios.

Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain can be defined as Eurozone periphery countries due to their specifics being rooted in policy systems and lagging behind in economic performance when compared with EU-15 countries. The objective of this paper is to provide an initial exploration of the similar and dissimilar business aspects' development within observed Greek and Irish entities' economic performance in different industries, using two-dimensional visualisation in the context of the recent world financial and economic crisis. This visualisation approach using classical correspondence analysis helps to reveal broader associations, which could influence the economic status of observed business units. Greek and Irish businesses which have been considered to be specifically, strongly and negatively influenced by the world economic downturn were observed. A sample of companies' corporate financial statements' data were employed. The sample of entities was set up according to the criterion of profitability of the whole involved capital development, regardless of its nature during the time period of the years 2008 - 2010, i. e. according to either the continual increase or decrease of the aforementioned indicator. Consequently, there were explored other attributes of assorted businesses, namely economic size and industry classification as the components for cross-tabular data sets. Authors revealed associations among different industries and size categories of Greek and Irish businesses using classical correspondence analysis.

The effectiveness of production factors can be evaluated against several relations, which must always be understood as relations between output and input. The aim of this paper is to assess the relationship between the effectiveness of production factors and business performance. One-factor productivity (more precisely labour productivity), total productivity (TFP) - on the basis of economic profit and Return on Assets (ROA) - the most synthetic indicator of profitability, were the applied indicators at approx. 820 agricultural enterprises. In the reference period (2004 - 2010) it was possible to describe the impact of the Czech Republic's accession to the European Union on the selected agricultural enterprises. The agricultural enterprises system was further classified according to several criteria to verify the assumption that enterprises with higher efficiency of production factors have a higher Return on Assets (ROA).

Effective Corporate Governance is seen as a key factor in achieving economic performance. This article aims to define key performance indicators (KPIs) of Corporate Governance (CG). Defined indicators in a clear, understandable and measurable way reflect the performance of CG. To meet the objectives of the article, a literature search was performed. Approaches of international organizations (IFAC, DVFA, EABIS and UNCTAD) to measure the performance of CG were analysed. In addition, a questionnaire survey was carried out. The purpose of the questionnaire survey was to describe the current situation and approach of companies to the issue of CG. Based on a synthesis of the knowledge 14 KPIs divided into six areas are proposed: Strategy; Effectiveness of CG; Corruption & anti-competitive behaviour; Involvement in politics & payments to public officials and institutions; Relations with stakeholders; and Compliance.

The recent debt-crisis, referred to as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), resulted in significant worldwide impacts. The main reason for the crisis was, ironically, the ease with which debt was made available, especially to those with a poor credit history. The crisis then resulted in a shortage of funds or an unwillingness to make credit available. This type of behaviour reflects a general withdrawal by international banks and other lending bodies from any type of activity, regardless of the type of lending and of risk where a withdrawal by one player tends to trigger similar actions by others. The purpose of the present paper is to examine debt funding in Australia post-GFC by first conducting a review of the extant literature followed by the results of an empirical study. The study was conducted among a sample of 59 Australian firms across more than 12 industries covering credit up to 10 years long. The result showed that nearly a third of the firms were in need of additional fund of which nearly half were in the region of $50m to $500m (AU$), with a maturity of up to three years. The most popular sources of funds are the domestic banks (70 %) and international banks (45 %). These outcomes are affected by the credit rating and the size of the firms, measured by gross annual turnover. The firms with a lower credit rating tend to exclude themselves from seeking high quality credit. The level of credit sought by the firms does not seem to be a factor determining the availability of credit.

The paper deals with the evolution of the retail sales in the Czech Republic and the European Union. Retail sales are a very important element of the total performance of a national economy. The aim of this article is to analyze the tendency of the retail sales and to compare their evolution in the Czech Republic with the results of the whole European Union. The paper presents graphical analysis studying relations between the retail sales and the macroeconomic development (GDP growth rate and unemployment rate) as well as the expectations of the households. As concerns the factors of the retail sales evolution, there is some positive correlation with the evolution of the general economic performance. However, there is no provable relation between the growth or decrease of the retail sales and the unemployment in both the EU and the Czech Republic.

Constructing models for predicting financial distress of small and medium enterprises requires its own treatment, because these firms differ from large campanies. The aim of this paper is to quantify the predictive power of selected ratios and to develop a statistical model for financial distress. We tested 16 financial ratios and the study relies on observations from 1563 firms. The model obtained by a methodology of conditional logit analysis includes quick liquidity ratio, average receivables collection period, leverage, solvency and interest coverage or debt coverage from current cash flow. The result confirmed that financial distress is closely related with the ability of a firm to pay its debts. Rentability wasn't found as so decive predictor in short period, there is a more complicated relation between rentability and payment capacity. As significant predictor was identified current cash flow (adjusted ordinary profit), which is much closely connected with cash.