Financial Case Essay

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Question no-1: How much business risk does American Home Products face? How much financial risk would American Home Products face at each of the proposed levels of debt shown in case Exhibit 3? How much potential value, if any, can AHP create for its shareholders at each of the proposed levels of debt? Answer: Business Risk of American Home Products (AHP): There are several factors that can determine the current business risk of AHP. We are going to discuss the level of business risk for some of those factors. In the later part we will also calculate the volatility of some important accounts of the financial statements from the historical data given in the case to get the overall idea about its business risk. Centralized Authority:It has both pros and cons depending on the size of an organization. In a small organization the more the authority is centralized the less it faces business risk. But following centralized organizational structure in a huge corporation like AHP is questionable. But so far, it is performing well enough throughout the years. AHP is something beyond the centralized authority as the whole organization is actually operating under the dictatorship of William F. Laporte, CEO of AHP. If anything undesirable happens to him may collapse the whole organization. Conservatism and Risk Aversion: AHP consistently avoided much of the risk of new-product development and introduction in the volatile drug industry. Most of its new products either were acquired or licensed after their development by other firms or they were copies of new products introduced by competitors. AHP thus avoided risky gambles on R&D and new-product introductions. Marketing Expertise:AHP’s success in these lines of business was built on marketing expertise. It used its marketing prowess to promote acquired productsand product extensions. When truly innovative products were

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