The Best Academic Preparation for an Editorial Career

The Best Academic Preparation for an Editorial Career The Best Academic Preparation for an Editorial Career The Best Academic Preparation for an Editorial Career By Mark Nichol I was painfully amused to find in a recent job listing the perpetuation of the absurd notion that a degree in English or literature, for God’s sake is the ideal preparation for work as a writer or editor. The listing required candidates to have a degree in English or literature. Now, there can be some merit in having earned an English degree, but English majors do not necessary master composition, much less the finer points of grammar, syntax, usage, punctuation, style, and the other components of writing, and revision of assigned papers is of little use in acquiring editing skills. I recall taking an English course in which the instructor spent most of every class period reading aloud word by word a manuscript he had written about grammar and asking students to identify the part of speech of every word. At the end of the term, despite this intensive analysis, I was no more knowledgeable about grammar than I had been at the beginning of the course. And few English majors endure this type of experience. Nevertheless, they do receive some instruction in writing, but it is mostly holistic – how to evaluate an argument’s logic and validity and how to organize one’s thoughts in writing. But little guidance is offered in the subtler qualities I listed above. A literature degree is even less useful; its basis is literary criticism, and though students write essays and term papers and theses, the focus is on dissecting the themes of literary works, not on developing coherence and clarity and conciseness. English and literature courses do not teach one how to choose just the right word. They do not assist one in structuring strong, active sentences with specific nouns and vivid verbs. They do not help one build narratives. In short, though some English and literature majors may develop into great writers and/or editors, an English or literature major is of little use to would-be masters of the language. On a related note, I am puzzled when I see job listings that require a degree in, say, economics or math. I’m lazy about laissez-faire, and I wouldn’t know a cosine from a stop sign. But I’ve edited scholarly books and textbooks in both subjects. I’ve worked on several science books, too, though I have only the gleanings of lifelong learning, rather than a degree in biology or physics or astronomy, to support me. What academic preparation, then, should students and employers value? Well, how about theater arts? That’s the degree I earned, and I’ve been gainfully employed in publishing and journalism since I retired from the stage more than a quarter century ago, soon after collecting that inestimably valuable diploma. (Trust me, though; I’ve experienced plenty of drama not to mention farce and tragedy in editorial working environments.) But, seriously, folks, what prepared me for my career was, first, a natural facility for writing a foundation that supported the edifice of practical experience. Even though I had no interest in journalism, I walked into my college’s student-newspaper office after my first day of classes and never looked back. I learned to tell a story writing is, at its fundamental level, nothing else than storytelling producing over a hundred articles, reviews, and editorials, and editing hundreds more as I took on steadily increasing responsibility. (And when I did take journalism courses, when students were assigned to write articles, I handed in pieces I had already written for the school paper.) Based on my experience, if there’s any degree employers should value when hiring for a writing or editing job, it’s one in journalism, or mass communication. But I didn’t earn one, and I know people who did earn one who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a keyboard. The most useful predictor of a job candidate’s ability is how well he or she writes on an assigned topic or edits a brief manuscript provided as part of the application process. Possession of a certain degree, by comparison no matter where it was earned is nearly useless. (And job history isn’t much more pertinent but that’s another topic altogether.) Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Freelance Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Inquire vs EnquireDifference between "Pressing" and "Ironing"20 Ways to Laugh

Discover The Cuban Swimmer, a Play by Milcha Sanchez-Scott

Discover The Cuban Swimmer, a Play by Milcha Sanchez-Scott The Cuban Swimmer is a one-act family drama with spiritual and surrealistic overtones by the American playwright  Milcha  Sanchez-Scott. This experimental play can be a creative challenge to stage because of its unusual setting and bilingual script. But it also presents actors and directors with an opportunity to explore identity and relationships in modern California culture. Synopsis As the play begins, 19-year-old Margarita Suarez is swimming from Long Beach to Catalina Island. Her Cuban-American family follows along in a boat. Throughout the competition (the Wrigley Invitational Women’s Swim), her father coaches, her brother cracks jokes to hide his jealousy, her mother frets, and her grandmother yells at the news helicopters. All the while, Margarita pushes herself onward. She battles the currents, the oil slicks, the exhaustion, and the family’s constant distractions. Most of all, she battles herself. Theme Most of the dialogue within â€Å"The Cuban Swimmer† is written in English. Some of the lines, however, are delivered in Spanish. The grandmother, in particular, speaks mostly in her native tongue. The switching back and forth between the two languages exemplifies the two worlds which Margarita belongs to, the Latino and the American. As she struggles to win the competition, Margarita tries to fulfill the expectations of her father as well as the crass American media (the news anchormen and the television viewers). However, by the play’s end, when she drifts beneath the surface when her family and the newscasters believe that she has drowned, Margarita separates herself from all outside influences. She discovers who she is, and she saves her life (and wins the race) independently. By almost losing herself in the ocean, she discovers who she truly is. The themes of cultural identity, especially Latino culture in Southern California, are common in all of Sanchez-Scotts works. As she told an interviewer in 1989: My parents came to California to settle, and the Chicano culture there was so different to me, very, very different from Mexico or where I came from [in Colombia]. Yet there were similarities: we spoke the same language; we had the same skin color; we had the same interaction with culture. Staging  Challenges As mentioned in the overview, there are many complicated, almost cinematic elements within  Sanchez-Scott’s The Cuban Swimmer. The main character is â€Å"swimming† the entire time. How would you, as a director, portray this action on stage?Margarita’s family puts along on a boat. How would you convey this? With a set? Pantomime?Helicopters and news commentators â€Å"interfere† with the characters. In what ways could sound effects enhance or sully the play? The Playwright Milcha  Sanchez-Scott was born in Bali, Indonesia, in 1953, to a Colombian-Mexican father and an Indonesian-Chinese mother. Her father, a botanist, later took the family to Mexico and Great Britain before settling in San Diego when  Sanchez-Scott was 14. After attending the University of California-San Diego, where she majored in drama, Sanchez-Scott moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. Frustrated by a dearth of roles for Hispanic and Chicano actors, she turned to playwriting, and in 1980 she published her first play, Latina. Sanchez-Scott followed the success of Latina with several other plays in the 1980s. The Cuban Swimmer was first performed in 1984 with another one-act play of hers, Dog Lady. Roosters followed in 1987 and Stone Wedding in 1988. In the 1990s,  Milcha  Sanchez-Scott largely withdrew from the public eye, and little is known of her in recent years. Sources Bouknight, Jon. Language as a Cure: An Interview with Milcha Sanchez-Scott. Latin American Theatre Review, Spring 1990.Mitgang, Herbert. Theater: Dog Lady and Swimmer. The New York Times, 10 May 1984.

Research Methods Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 7

Research Methods - Essay Example n was asked why his party chose to increase the tuition fees, he replied that it would mainly do two things; firstly, it would ensure that UK’s English universities are well funded and; secondly it would mean that the UK government would not go on raising tuition for higher education students so fast (Vasagar2012). The increasing of tuition fees in the UK has led to a lot of controversy, which has caused many individuals lash out at the Conservative regime and a majority of perspective students traumatized at the thought of having to pay off  £27,000 worth of education fees, prior to adding up the fee of their maintenance loans, as well (Bachana 2013). In the wake of all this, university students in the UK are turning to employment to be able to pay this high school fees rate, as well as settle the loans they use while in school. This essay conducted surveys, observation, journals and books, with regards to how the new English fee system has affected student employment. The main survey method that was used was conducting interviews through questionnaires. In this regard, 250 were distributed to undergraduate students in order to come up with the findings. In addition, using this type of sources will help to conduct an understandable research strategy and accurate timetable of activities. A research question should be clear, concise, centered, complex and arguable. It should be a question that everybody in the team was genuinely interested in (Munn, 2004). These aspects were particularly important because they helped us center on our research by providing a way through the research, as well as writing process. My group’s specificity of a well-developed research topic helped us avoid the â€Å"all-about† types of papers and endeavor towards supporting a particularly arguable thesis, â€Å"the new  £9000 per year English fee tuition has affected student term time employment habits.† Due to the recent debate in UK universities with regards to raising the annual

Managing External Stakeholders Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Managing External Stakeholders - Essay Example The company management has to make a balancing assessment and evaluate all such external forces in order to adjust them with company's objectives. While taking crucial corporate decisions, it is necessary to know about the expectations of different stakeholders and to determine the extent to which they could and would exert their influence. Johnson & Scholes (1999) define stakeholder as, "Stakeholders are groups or individuals who have a stake in, or expectation of, the organisation's performance." For any organization to work, all the stakeholders have to pool their efforts. Terry & Franklin (1994) define management as 'a distinct process consisting of activities of planning, organizing, actuating and controlling performed to determine and accomplish stated objectives with the use of human beings and other resources'. Different organisations have different sets of stakeholders, whose nature and composition varies depending upon the nature of business. For example the Arsenal Footbal l Club, besides being a soccer club is a public limited company in itself. As football club, its main stakeholders are, the players, the spectators, football fans, the club administrators etc. But as a plc, a broader array of stakeholders comes into picture. The Arsenal Holdings plc manages stadiums, matches, football teams, online TV channel, credit card business, sports academies, strategic partnerships with host of other organizations etc. Therefore the company has stakeholders from different corners of the society in general. The Arsenal Football Club started off when a group of workers at the Woolwich Arsenal Armament Factory decided to form a football team in late 1886. The club has now transformed into a full fledged company organizing different types of activities. The recent half yearly financial results for the company indicate an impressive growth rate with group turnover increasing to GBP100.8 million (2005: GBP57.0 million) as a result of higher gate and match day reven ues at Emirates Stadium and sale of a property development site at Drayton Park1. Similarly, British Petroleum (BP) is a leading oil and gas company. The company's operations include the exploration and production of gas and crude oil, construction and mining, manufacturing and transportation. Besides this the company also has a network of subsidiaries engaged in the chemicals, power and renewable energy sectors. The company maintains leading brands like BP, AM/PM, Aral, ARCO, Castrol etc. With operations spread over six continents in about 100 countries, the company maintains stakeholders in many forms and profiles. The humble beginning of BP can be traced back to 1901 when William Know tried to explore oil in Persia. But it was not before 1908 that the first commercial oil discovery was made in the Middle East by BP (Datamonitor, 2006). In 1935, the company prospered and was renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Similarly, exploration expanded into North America (mainly Alaska), South America, Africa, and Europe. The war effort resulted in the British governmen t becoming a shareholder in the company, an association which went on till 1987. Any organization is managed by soliciting crucial support and guidance from respective stakeholders and by taking care of different factors affecting the functioning of an organization. A coordinated approach is required for taking care of all the

Share Repurchases in the US, UK, France and Germany

Share Repurchases in the US, UK, France and Germany 1. Introduction: The market system in the UK and the US has emphasized the role of the stock market in the Anglo-American capitalist system. Shares and bonds have become very common tools of investment in the capital system. Investors buy shares and bonds in the hope of getting capital gains plus income from their investments. Shares offer investors capital gains/losses and dividends, share are very attractive investment tools for people who are prepared to risk their principle and get less than the amount that they have invested. Bonds offer limited return on investments, Bonds offer investors the same principle. Financial managers usually pay off their shareholders using two methods: Dividends: dividends are share of the capital that investors receive in return for investing their money in the company.   Share repurchase/buyback: some financial managers choose to buyback the shares of the company if they feel that they company’s shares are undervalued, buying part of the shares will boost the remaining outstanding share prices. Over the last twenty five years, companies have become less prone to distribute funds to shareholders. This noticeable increase in dividends is accompanies by share repurchases in the US. Since Margaret Thatcher came to the power in the UK, the United Kingdom has adapted a very similar economic path to the US. These developments in the US have been followed by very similar developments in the UK. British companies are trying to concentrate on share buyback rather than pay dividends. In this assignment, we will try to find out why companies are heading towards share buyback. 2. What determines the payout policy of the company?: Miller and Modigliani (1961) were the first two scientists to challenge that fact that high dividends payout leads to higher value of a company. It is apparent that companies’ payout policy does not affect the value of the company. The reason that made Miller and Modigliani think that the payout policy of the firm does not affect the value of the firm is that fact that in a frictionless economy investors could make their decisions rationally with no or minimum stochastic factors. Investors will be able to see that distributing too much dividends means that the company is missing investment opportunities and that its future cash flows will be substantially less than now. While if the company retained its earnings in order to invest into projects, investors will think that the company has over invested and so that the return on its capital will be substantially less than the market average. Miller and Modigliani thought that companies could not create the impression that they are better than what they are in reality. For several reasons, there are many people nowadays that do not believe in Miller and Modigliani, one of the possible reasons for that is the fact that financial markets are not frictionless and investors are not totally rational. In the financial markets, there are many short-sighted investors that prefer to get profit as soon as possible without paying any real value to the future cash flow of the firm. But the supporter of Miller and Modigliani argue that institutional investors watch the payout policy of the firm very carefully and analyze the activities of the firm in a very good way so institutional investors do know the value of the firm exactly. Although Miller and Modigliani do not see any difference in the value of the firm no matter what payout policy the firm follows; there are many people who think that having high payout policy is much better than retaining funds because high payout policy attracts institutional investors who are able to monitor the company and give a more precise valuation to the value of the company and its credit quality. Trojanowski, G(2004) thinks that the company is really in typical type I error and type II error dilemma, if the company adapted high payout policy towards so it became cash constraint the company might miss profitable investment opportunity( type II error), but if the company retained cash and invested in unprofitable projects this will be type I error. Trojanowski, G(2004) thinks that this high payout policy is considered the price that should be paid to institutional investors in order to get things right and be able to give precise valuation to the company. There are several factors that determine the payout policy of a firm; we can summarize these factors as: Valuation of the company’s value, taxes, information asymmetries and contract incompleteness. 2.1 Valuation of the Firm’s shares: The value of the firm itself play a substantial role in the payout policy for any company, if the firm’s shares are undervalued, companies’ tend to buyback their share prices in order to make use of the undervalued share price, this will improve the share price and encourage investors to invest more in the shares of the particular company. Share buyback play the merger acquisition impact on share prices, in the case of merger and acquisition, a company comes forward to buy the shares of an undervalued company, this normally leads to a hike in the share prices of both companies. In the case of share buyback, the company itself comes forward to buy its own shares, this leads as well to a hike in the share price.   The rise in share prices resulting from share repurchases will make it more difficult to other companies to buy the shares of the undervalued company because buying the shares of the undervalued company will require additional premium. The success of the share buyback process is directly related to the number of investors who come forward to sell their shares. The number of investors who come forward to sell their shares is related to the price at which the shares were bought. If the price of the bought shares was high and then fell dramatically, the buyback process will not be enough to compensate for the full loss of the invested money; Investors will rather prefer to change the management and hold it accountable for the poor results of the company.    If the fall in the price of the shares was modest and share buyback compensated the loss that investors have incurred and/or made capital gains, many investors will prefer to sell their shares and that is how the buyback process becomes successful. 2.2 Tax: According to Miller and Modigliani (1961): dividends do not affect the value of the firm: This result is based on many assumptions: taxes,   The tax system of any country will affect the payout policy of most of the companies in the world. The research that has been done on this issue refers to two facts: The first one is that companies tend to change their payout policy if the tax law changed. The second one is that: according to Kalay (1982) and Stiglitz, J, E (1983) individual investors do rebalance their portfolios quickly enough in response to tax law changes; this school of thought thinks that investors always try to follow tax avoidance strategies in order to maximize their wealth by â€Å"dividend laundering† In other words, investors will try to put pressure on their company in order to pay them in the most tax efficient way that maximizes their wealth and the value of the company. Share repurchases are very attractive way of distributing the profits of the company because they could happen at any time of the year; investors try to put pressure on the company to choose a suitable time for most of them. Share repurchases give investors the flexibility and the choice in participations, investors might choose to participate in the share repurchase if they feel that their overall tax liabilities will become less. Investors could defer their tax payments to make their own decision of when to sell in order to maximize their total wealth. Of course, shareholders can sell their shares in the market if they want cash as a tax Advantaged substitute for either share repurchases or cash dividends. In the law, the tax paid on capital gains is deferred until the shares are sold whereas any income tax on dividends is paid annually. The deferral of the capital gains tax reduces its present value. Broadly speaking dividends in the UK enjoy a less favourable tax regime than share repurchases which may give rise to something of a Dividend Policy Puzzle. Although dividends do not enjoy the same tax treatment that share repurchases have, most of the companies in the UK are still paying dividends because most of the investors are tax-exempt and companies listen to their shareholders in the UK. This point will be researched in more detail in the coming sections 2.3 Financial Structure: When companies decide to buyback their shares, they change their financial structure. Share buyback is accompanied with significant debt/equity ratio. Share repurchase does not only reduce equity but also increases debt. The leverage ratio will increase after the buyback period. The financial structure of the company has a profound impact on the payout policy. In order to understand how the financial structure affects the payout policy we need to understand the concept pf â€Å"block holders†. Block Holders are few numbers of investors who own the majority of the shares of the company. The economic literature is increasingly enforcing the fact that block holders could play a positive role in monitoring the performance of the companies that they invest in because they have a big interest in preserving and growing the capital that they have invested. Unlike small investors, block holders power is very important in keeping the management of the company doing the best it can in order to maximize the wealth of the shareholders. When companies use share buyback, it is expected that minority shareholders will sell their shares to the issuing company and not the block holders.    When that happens, small shareholders numbers will decrease and there power will be less. This will open the door for bloke shareholders to use their power in imposing what they want without listening to the minority shareholders who have less power in the board room than bloke shareholder. In that sense, we can say that changing the financial structure of the company can have a negative impact on the minority shareholders who choose to sell some of their shares to the issuing company. In many countries such as Germany, France, Italy and Hong Kong, the volume of shares to be repurchased must not exceed 10% of total shares outstanding. Firms from such countries can therefore not use repurchase programs to increase their debt-to-capital ratio dramatically and to transfer value from debt holders to shareholders. 2.4 Cash Flow: Public companies have shares that could be traded on the stock exchange, as illustrated above; investors expect return on their investments in the shape of dividends. If the company did not meet investors’ expectations, share prices will go down. Share buyback happens when the company has cash that is in excess of the company’s needs. If the company cannot pay its investors good return on their investments, it is better to return the money to the investors in the shape of share buyback. Jagannathan, Stephens and Weisbach (2000) showed that companies with excessive operating cash flows tend to distribute dividends while companies with limited operating cash flow tend to repurchase their shares. Companies with temporary excessive cash flow tend to repurchase its shares in order to distribute the excess cash flow. Companies with temporary excess cash flow tend to distribute its excess cash because the company wants to smooth its dividends policy, it is not in the company’s best interests to increase the volatility of its dividends because dividends are very important signaling tools that the market use in valuing the shares of the company, when dividends increase because of temporary excess cash and them decrease later one, share prices will become volatile and investors will try to avoid the shares of that particular company. 2.5 Agency Problem: The industrial revolution has contributed significantly to the separation of management from ownership. There is a constant crisis of trust between management and the shareholders of any public company. Under perfect conditions, the management is supposed to be working for the best interests of the shareholders, but what happens in reality is something different, the management is constantly trying to maximize its own benefits and wealth on the expense of the shareholders. The relationship between management and shareholders is not always a cooperative relationship; the relationship might well prove to be a competitive relationship.   Managers and company directors might misuse the funds of the shareholders; directors might use the money of the shareholders in increasing their salaries, pensions and other allowances instead of paying this money to the shareholders in the form of dividends or share buyback. When company directors choose to use the excess funds that they have in buying back the shares of the investors or in other words returning their money, the trust between the investors and the company directors increases significantly. Share buyback proves that there is a wise management in that particular organization; investors will see this move as maintenance to the resources of the investors. Company directors that choose to invest the excess cash that they have in non-profitable projects will be seen in the financial markets as not reliable; investors will know that the top management of that company is not sound.  Ã‚   Some school of thoughts claim that share buybacks are bad for the minority shareholders if they are not accompanied with the selling of the shares of the directors. The reason for that is the fact that company directors own shares and share options in the company and if the company made a share buyback, the share of directors and managers in the company will increase and this will open the door for possible misuses. Many economists recommend that share buyback has to be accompanied by the selling of the shares of the directors in order to keep a sound management system in the corporation, Siu, J Weston, F(2002). Finally, Share repurchases can violate the interests of the last majority of uninformed shareholders when only inside shareholders have information about the exact timing of repurchase transactions and the amount that the issuing company will purchase. Insiders could use that knowledge to dispose of their shares at a higher price than under normal market conditions, IKENBERRY/VERMAELEN 1996. This illegal action would cause a wealth transfer from outside shareholders to inside shareholders and if anticipated by outside shareholders should lead to a negative announcement effect. 2.6 Signaling: Share buyback are used a signaling tool, dividends convey information about the future cash flow of the company. Motivations are normally in line with shareholders’ interests; this includes the attempt by management to convey to investors that the true value of their corporation’s equity exceeds its current market value. Such a signal might be based on management’s believe that the true mean of the probability distribution of the firm’s future cash flows is actually higher than perceived by the market or alternatively, that the true variance of future returns is higher than expected, holding the distribution mean constant, DANN (1981) We have two cases depending on the prices of the financial assets of the company:    In the first case, all of the firm’s risky securities appear to be undervalued. In the latter case, only equity claims appear to be undervalued, whereas claims in the form of risky debt might in fact be overvalued. Share repurchases could actually lead to a re-distribution of debt holders’ wealth to the benefit of shareholders. It is typically assumed that insiders which are the company’s management and directors know a lot more information about the company’s cash flow situation than insiders. However, any straight public announcement by the board of directors that it considers its firm’s shares to be undervalued generally lacks credibility because there might be other hidden motives to the management. Outside investors cannot distinguish between true and misleading announcements because they do not have all the information about the company. They will perceive of all undervaluation announcements as try to hide the truth about share repurchases unless the company produces evidence that undervaluation is the real motivation for share repurchases.    Share repurchase announcements cause two types of costs to overvalued firms. Firstly, firms that repurchase overvalued shares must understand that the share price will decline to its true intrinsic value as soon as possible, so that the company would have paid too much for its shares. Secondly, firms that announce to repurchase shares but then decide not to do so might see their general reputation for honest capital market communication deteriorate because the company’s public relations status with the company will be shaken. Depending on the legal and regulatory restrictions for share repurchase programs, such firms also risk that authorities initiate investigations of price manipulation. Given these potential costs, share repurchase announcements can be used as a clear signal to enhance the reputation and the credibility of an undervaluation signal. Such credible signals should then lead to an appreciation in stock price and benefit the investors who are welling to sell their shares. Share buyback will convey a message to investors that the company has few good projects (NPV Share buyback indicate that the financial situation of the company is not strong enough in order to meet the expectations of the investors. When the company chooses to pay its investors by distributing dividends, it gives the signal that it has many good projects (NPV>0), and the company believes that it could create capital gains to investors without seeking refuge to share buyback. 2.7 Employee incentive plans: The company might seek to purchase its own shares in order to finance its employee incentive plans. In the current capitalist system, many companies realized that empowering employees is the best way to align the interests of the employees with the interest of the company. Through the history, the management and the employees were always at odds and that caused many strikes and struggle within the company. Many companies found out that the future organizations of the companies should depend on giving employees the initiative and turning them into an asset rather than looking at them as a liability or an expense. This process has been triggered by the introduction of new technologies that enabled top managements to cut the middle management and give the authorities of the middle management to the employees that the technology will help them to perform their tasks in a more efficient way without the direct supervision of the middle management. This process could not be achieved without giving employees shares in the company and make them real partners in the organizations. When employees get share of the profit they will work harder than before and that will benefit the whole organization and the society. Share repurchases are one of the best ways to turn the employees into an asset since share repurchases happen when the share price is relatively cheap, share repurchases provide a very cheap way to finance the employee share scheme and create a wholly new organization that depends on mutual trust between management and employees rather than struggle between them. 2.8 Convertible bonds execution: Convertible bonds are defined as bonds that pay a regular coupon for their buyer, the price of bonds will depend on two main things: interest rates and credit quality of the issuer. Convertible bonds combine the feature of bonds and shares at the same time. We all know that companies give their investors the option to convert their bonds into common shares at any time they want in order to make their bonds more attractive to investors and give investors the flexibility in choosing the investment tools that they foresee suitable to their investment strategy. We all know that shares and bonds are two different products that offer two different profit and loss opportunities. Most of the times, shares and bonds markets work at odds. When interest rates are low share prices seem to be a better investment opportunity than bonds because they offer better return on investment. When interest rates are high bonds seem to be a better investment opportunity than shares because they offer better return on capital. Many companies encourage investors to invest with them by giving them the option( this option is called call option) to convert their bonds to shares. When the company has a shortage of shares the company will have to buy them directly from the market in order to meet its investor’s requirements of converting bonds into shares. 2.9 Trade shares: Trading shares might be the motive for share repurchases in the UK and elsewhere in the developed world. When the market is depressed and the share prices reflect less than their fair value many companies will resort to buying their own shares in order to sell them later at a higher price. When big companies believe that their shares are under-estimated, they invest the excess cash that they have in themselves in order to encourage more investors to buy their shares and when the market prices of the shares goes up the issuing companies will resell them at profit. Investors will benefit from this share repurchase by two ways: Investors will be able to sell some of their shares at higher price and make profit from that. Investors will benefit from the higher dividends that their company will pay them as a result of re-selling the shares at higher price.     Ã‚  Ã‚   Share repurchase might aim as well to reduce the volatility of the share and stabilize its price. Share trading s not as easy as it might seem, there are regulations that govern the ability of the company to buy/sell its own stocks. 2.10 Destroy shares: There are two reasons to destroying shares: The first one is to change the ownership structure and the second one is to increase the wealth of the shareholders. Change the ownership structure: When the company buys its own shares in order to destroy them, it destroy with the shares the voting right, we all know that owning one share means owning one vote, this means that destroying one share means destroying one vote. According to Pindur, D Lucke, M (no date given) the management might find it very cost effective to have homogenous shareholders rather than heterogeneous shareholders, that’s why the company offers share repurchases and destroys shares. In that case, the company will offer investors what is called a â€Å"controlled premium†, which is a premium that is paid above the market price in order to lure investors to sell their shares. Wealth creation for investors: The best measure to wealth creation is the Economic Value Added; Economic Value Added is defined as the operating after tax profit minus a charge for the opportunity cost of the invested capital. When the company wants to maximize its shareholders wealth by buying and destroying the shares directly from the market the company will resort to the following measures: Decrease the weighted average cost of capital (WACC): we all know that the weighted average cost of capital depends on two major elements which are shares and bonds: the average cost of bonds is the interest rate that is paid to the bondholder, the average cost of shares will depend on the risk premium that is required by shareholders to compensate them for the risk of losing their invested principle; when the company buys its own stock it reduces the weight of equity in the mix of capital, so the weighted average cost of capital will be less and that is how the wealth of the shareholders will increase if the company bought the shares from the market and destroyed them; reducing the weighted average cost of capital means that producing the same profits or more with less costs of capital, this is a real sign of improvement in the situation of the company, the issuing company has to be careful that reducing the number of outstanding shares might mean that share prices will go up in ord er to satisfy the demand on the shares of the company, especially when shares get less, the dividends get better, this might increase the demand on shares, that is why management is always advised to reduce the amount of shares and debt in the same percentage in order to leave prices of shares and bonds relatively stable, the opposition to share buyback comes from debt holders especially those with unsecured debt, the reason for that is the fact that when shares decreases this means that capital has decreased and this means that if the company went bankrupt there will be no enough capital to cover the value of the debt, while shareholders will be the least losers from bankruptcy, again that is another reason why companies are advised to buy shares and bonds at the same time and keep its leverage ratio stable during the time, A third and final reason for advising companies to buy shares and bonds at the same time is the reason that many companies offer convertible bonds which could b e converted at any time to certain number of shares, if the company did not buy shares and bonds at the same time and share prices went up, convertible bond investors might find it more profitable to convert their bonds to shares and in this situation the company will find itself in front of two options the first one wither buying more shares to convertible bond investors from the market and that would mean paying high prices for them or issuing new shares again and that would make share repurchases pointless. Increase the return on invested capital (ROIC): this idea is very related to what we explained before about type I error and type II error, in other words the company will take decisions regarding the best investment opportunities that are available, it is assumed that the company will select the projects that maximize the return on invested capital and return the excess cash to the investors in the shape of share repurchases, this process will maximize the return on equity to the maximum, we all know that the marginal propensity to capital will increase rapidly at the beginning of the investment and after that the amount of increase will de-accelerate until it the marginal propensity to capital reaches zero and then it starts to decline.  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚   Increase the growth rate: when the right amount of capital has been allocated to the most profitable projects the growth rate of the company should be maximum. 2.11 Legislative reasons: Sometimes companies in a particular country find very difficult to repurchase their stocks even if there is tax benefit from repurchasing the stock rather than distributing dividends. In the US for example, companies did not repurchase their shares until after the mid-eighties. According to Grullon, G Michaely, R(2000:PDF page 5), one of the possible reasons for that is â€Å"the risk of violating the anti-manipulative provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Indeed, after the SEC adopted a safe–harbor rule (Rule 10b-18) in 1982 that guarantees that, under certain conditions, this agency will not file manipulation charges against companies repurchasing shares on the open market, repurchase activity experienced an upward structural shift†. Grullon, G Michaely, R(2000) says that one year after the change of the SEC rule the amount of earnings that have been distributed as share repurchases tripled. In Germany for example, share repurchases are still very difficult because they need the approval of the shareholders that should be got in the Annual General Meeting. We can see clearly that regulation is a very important too in encouraging and discouraging share repurchases. 2.12 Dilute earnings: Many analysts think that share options have helped in aliening the directors’ interests with the interests of the shareholders but few people investigated how stock options change the behavior and choice of directors to distributing earnings.    There is increasing evidence that executive compensation that is usually granted in the form of stock option has a lot to do with share repurchases in the UK and the US. Accounting rules make compulsory on companies to reflect the value of the stock options that are given to directors and managers. We all know that writing an option on the shares of the company is equivalent to increasing the number of the outstanding shares. When company directors want to exercise their options, there need to acquire actual shares of the company and that would make Earnings per Share less for everybody; that is called â€Å"diluting the earnings†. Earnings per Share are the total earnings divided by the number of outstanding common shares and common shares equivalents. When earnings per share become actually less; the company will try to repurchase the shares from the market. Earnings per share will not only be less but also will cause a decline in share prices later on because EPS is used in valuing the shares. The cash that is actually used to repurchase the shares will not be deducted from the total earnings and that the company will keep its total earnings unchanged after the repurchase of the shares from the market. In order to illustrate this point further, there is a difference between EPS and diluted EPS. Diluted EPS is the total earnings of the company subtracted from the cost of share options and warrants divided by the number of outstanding common shares and equivalents. When analysts value shares they look at EPS but not diluted EPS. After share repurchases, EPS will be the same as before share repurchase EPS. So companies try to repurchase their own shares because they try to hideout the cost of share option costs. If we look at the empirical studies that have been done in this area we find that most of the studies found a correlation between stock repurchases and executive’s share options. According to Lambert, Lanen, and Larcker (1989), Option grants in general are associated with increased payouts and decreased earnings retention. The larger is the executives’ holding of stock options, the more apt the firm is to retain more earnings and curtail cash distributions. This finding is consistent with Fenn and Liang (2000) that   there is a well-documented finding of negative relationship between dividends and managerial stock options and. The relationship does not appear to be explained by differe

My Ideal School Essay

What is a school? To me, a school is the center of education. It provides intellectual ,emotional as well as spiritual enrichment. I am sure everyone has their own notion of what an ideal school is. It is a place where one feels most comfortable to learn in. In my opinion,an ideal school would consists of a building with an ultra modern infrastructure and top-notch facilities. All the classrooms will have colourful walls with wonderful paintings and thought-provoking pictures hanging on them. All the classrooms will be well-lit and fully air-conditionered. It would be perfect if the tables and chairs are arranged in a semi-circle facing the teacher. Apart from that,we will also need a well-equipped library with the state-of-art facilities for students to conduct their research and studies. Computer cataloguing should also be introduced to make referencing easier. In addition an ideal school should have a shopisticated gymnasium and sports centre. Athletes and swimmers can also train at the school mini-stadium and swimming pool. Students nowadays are burdened with homework and endless examinations. My constructive and productive homework shoul be given instead of burdening homework. Students should not be doing their homework for the sake of doing them. Teachers could perhaps have Biology classes outdoors so that students can really appreciate the beauty of nature or organized field trips to exhibition and conventions to make learning interesting. Traditional art and culture classes should also be held in the ideal school to nurture the spirit of appreciation among students. Moreover,to maximize the students learning capacities,lessons should start at 10. 00 a. m. There should be breaks in between so that students can digest knowledge from the previous lesson instead of rushing to the next lesson straight after the previous one. In this era of globalization,ICT is of upmost importance . So why can’t schools have paperless teaching and learning? Heavy bags and tons of books should be a thing of the past. Besides,it will also great if the students have teleconferencing and online forum with scholars from all over the world. The notion of ideal is sometimes painfully defined as an idea existing only in imagination and is not likely to come true. However I believe the idea of creating an ideal school would not merely remain a dream after all.

The History of Ap Lang Lincoln Second Inaugural Speech Essay Samples Refuted

The History of Ap Lang Lincoln Second Inaugural Speech Essay Samples Refuted I have a hyperlink below about our adventure and a number of photos of orbs taken that evening. The house is extremely nice inside with plenty of time period pieces. It must be noted that in the event you will need to use the restroom whilst on the tour, you can go downstairs and to the rear of the home. Steer clear of this place folks. They needed their very own song. The album is going to be on display at the function. If you'd like to take your own tour of the cemetery, here's a superb map of all of the notable grave websites. Excellent house tour and just tour in the country devoted to a First Lady. What's Really Happening with Ap Lang Lincoln Second Inaugural Speech Essay Samples With one eye ensuring the history made sense, I started to see that every performance truly captures their character. 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