Die Kapitalkosten von Rückstellungen — zur Anwendung des Shareholder Value-Konzeptes in Deutschland

Summary Provisions are a very important source of financing for German firms. We try to derive its implicit costs of capital. Depending on the duration of the provision we use two different approaches: Building up provisions leads to additional liquidity of the firm. For short-term provisions we assume that this additional cash is invested in riskless bonds. Here the costs of capital are opportunity costs of the share-holders who suffer a cut in dividends by setting up the provision. The additional Provision is tax-deductable; the corresponding tax savings’ costs of capital are zero. Because of this costless part within the total costs of capital, the Investment in bonds by the firm has a positive NPV for the shareholders although the firm must pay a higher tax rate upon the interest income than the shareholder. For long-term provisions the costs of capital are derived under the assumption that the additional cash is used to pay back existing straight debt. We determine the implicit costs of capital for long term provisions by calculating a critical interest rate iv at which the shareholder is indifferent between the two sources of capital, provisions on the one hand and straight debt on the other. In the event of current interest rate as costs of capital for straight debt being higher than the critical interest rate iy, management should prefer financing by provisions.