| When considering financial source, companies are not only confronted with equity or debt financing choice, but also with debt maturity choice. The scheme of the debt maturity is another important factor to the financing plan of a company besides capital structure. At present, the theories about capital structure and debt maturity are more perfect than before. However, almost all of academic researches about financial structure in our country think of all kinds of firm's debt as the same, and when discuss the optimal capital structure, rarely relate to debt structure.This paper not only makes theoretical analysis but also makes empirical analysis. In the course of theoretical analysis, the paper dissertate the classic capital structure theory, debt maturity structure theory and the results of some important empirical analyses at first. Then, make simultaneous equations in which Return on Assets, leverage, and the rate of short-term debt as dependent variables. This model which takes the interaction of leverage, debt maturity and corporate performance into account is better than single equation.According to regression analysis, this paper find that the rate of total debt is too low, but the rate of short-term debt is too high. The debt structures in Chinese listed companies are unreasonable. Leverage, the rate of short-term debt and Return on Assets have negative correlation. Some results prove contracting-cost hypotheses, tax hypotheses, and matching hypotheses, no result proves signaling hypotheses.The problems mentioned above are caused by the uneven developed of the capital market in our country, the weak legal system, the unreasonable structure of corporate governance, and so on. Optimizing the debt maturity structure is the most important thing in improving the effect of the governance of debt. At last, this paper offer proposals for optimizing the financial structure of listed companies in our country. |
