A firm wants to decrease its debt-to-asset ratio without affecting its current ratio. Which of the following actions can it undertake?
I. Retire some of its outstanding bonds by using proceeds from the sale of old assets.
II. Increase sales on credit.
III. Pay off a part of the "salaries payable" account using cash.
IV. Issue new stocks and invest the proceeds to purchase a production plant.
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A. B. C. D.C
Both "accounts receivable," which represents sales on credit and "salaries payable" are current accounts. Therefore, if you do not want to affect current ratio, II and III are not acceptable strategies. When old assets are sold and the proceeds used to retire outstanding bonds, the debt-to-asset ratio decreases. This is because debt/asset ratio is almost always less than 1 (we will ignore abnormal cases where book equity can go negative; e.g. the case where the firm keeps borrowing and paying out the proceeds as dividends). Hence, when both numerator and denominator are decreased, the ratio decreases. However, the current portion of the long-term debt also gets retired, increasing the current ratio. So I is also not an acceptable strategy, though at first glance it appears so. With IV, debt is unaffected but assets increase, decreasing the debt/asset ratio.