Corporate Capital Structure Changes during Financial Crisis: Case of Polish Companies

Abstract

The paper is addressed to the subject of corporate capital structure (equity and debt relation) for Polish companies. The aim of the paper is to identify the changes in capital structure with regard to the recent financial crisis. The research hypothesis is that the leverage would decrease during crisis period and increase after crisis. In the paper the impact of financial crisis on capital structure was analysed on four sets of data: data for all companies of the whole economy, panel data of Polish listed companies, panel data of Polish listed companies with the lowest debt ratio in 2005 (panel A) and panel data of Polish listed companies with the highest debt ratio in 2005 (panel B). The descriptive statistics and the statistical testing of the differences were employed. The multivariate regression analysis was also employed to identify how different factors affect the capital structure. The main finding of the paper is that Polish companies generally did not change their capital structure during financial crisis time. This is especially true for the panel sample and panel B, while companies from panel A increase their debt ratio despite financial crisis.