Ekonomski Vjesnik (Dec 2010)
Occurrences in Capital Structure Flow of Croatian Companies in the Pre-Recession Period (2002 – 2007)
Abstract
The objectives of the paper were to analyse the ways of changing the capital structure in Croatian companies in the period 2002-2007 and to examine whether there is a difference in the capital structure with regard to the activity and the regions in Croatia. The capital structure was examined by analysing three financial coefficients: debt ratio, liabilities/capital ratio and indebtedness factor. The research encompassed a representative sample of 1,500 Croatian companies whose structure was observed in the mentioned period. The companies had three activities: manufacturing, services and commerce and were located in three regions: eastern, north-western and the Adriatic region. Variance analysis (ANOVA) for repeated measurements was used to analyse longitudinal data. The results show that the most frequent way of capital structure change is the one where the equity remains the same and own capital grows through retained earnings while the capital from outside sources increases as well. Furthermore, there is a difference in capital structure regarding the activity and the regions in Croatia at a certain time. The highest indebtedness was recorded in the commercial business while the lowest was in the service industry. Moreover, the highest indebtedness level is in the eastern region and the lowest in the north-western region.
