An article in the wall street journal in 2016 noted that: open double quoteover 30% of euro-denominated investment-grade corporate bonds trade at a negative yield while 84% yield less than 1%.close double quote source: christopher whittall, open double quotebond investors cash out in europe, head to u. s.,close double quote wall street journal, september 1, 2016. 1. what caused so many european corporate bonds to have negative interest rates? a. central banks were slowing asset purchases. b. the european central bank cut interest rates to negative levels. c. the european economy was growing at higher than normal rates. d. inflation rates were consistently increasing. 2. why would anyone buy a bond with a negative interest rate? a. competing interest rates on bonds and other securities of comparable risk were low. b. a lack of availability of corporate bonds. c. many of the bond purchases were made by individual investors who were wary of investing in higher risk bonds. d. a lack of availability of government bonds.

San ruiz interiors provides design services to residential and commercial clients. the residential services produce a contribution margin of $450,000 and have traceable fixed operating costs of $480,000. management is studying whether to drop the residential operation. if closed, the fixed operating costs will fall by $370,000 and san ruiz’ income will

Chance company had two operating divisions, one manufacturing farm equipment and the other office supplies. both divisions are considered separate components as defined by generally accepted accounting principles. the farm equipment component had been unprofitable, and on september 1, 2018, the company adopted a plan to sell the assets of the division. the actual sale was completed on december 15, 2018, at a price of $600,000. the book value of the division’s assets was $1,000,000, resulting in a before-tax loss of $400,000 on the sale. the division incurred a before-tax operating loss from operations of $130,000 from the beginning of the year through december 15. the income tax rate is 40%. chance’s after-tax income from its continuing operations is $350,000. required: prepare an income statement for 2018 beginning with income from continuing operations. include appropriate eps disclosures assuming that 100,000 shares of common stock were outstanding throughout the year. (amounts to be deducted should be indicated with a minus sign. round eps answers to 2 decimal places.)

Burke enterprises is considering a machine costing $30 billion that will result in initial after-tax cash savings of $3.7 billion at the end of the first year, and these savings will grow at a rate of 2 percent per year for 11 years. after 11 years, the company can sell the parts for $5 billion. burke has a target debt/equity ratio of 1.2, a beta of 1.79. you estimate that the return on the market is 7.5% and t-bills are currently yielding 2.5%. burke has two issuances of bonds outstanding. the first has 200,000 bonds trading at 98% of par, with coupons of 5%, face of $1000, and maturity of 5 years. the second has 500,000 bonds trading at par, with coupons of 7.5%, face of $1000, and maturity of 12 years. kate, the ceo, usually applies an adjustment factor to the discount rate of +2 for such highly innovative projects. should the company take on the project?