As discussed in earlier posts,
financial ration is an essential tool to determine how the company or business fares. This may be related to its performance in the past or to other businesses in a similar industry. I know some companies, especially the new ones, do not really think about this much, but eventually, I believe this would be very useful for them, if they want to be called survivors in this dog-eat-dog world.
Anyway, there are many factors to consider in computing a financial ration. One of these is a company's leverage. I know some business people utter this word to make them smart asses, but few of them actually know only little about its real impact or meaning on their businesses -- in short, they're pretty dumb, too. In this case, let's make things easier for people, shall we? In simple terms, leverage involves the money borrowed by the company and the money invested in it. Like in any other
money lending situation, borrowed money entails interest and the company should make sure that its cash flow would cover not only the principal and interest due to a lending body, but also the amount needed to account for the investment of shareholders and to support its operations. Of course, no business would survive without initial borrowing, but I say, you have to keep those debts as minimal as possible before your liabilities overwhelm your company's assets.
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