Leverage structure decisions in Bangladesh: managers and investors' view

The paper investigates the impact of managers' and investors' perceptions on financial leverage decisions in Bangladesh. To fulfill the purpose of the paper, the final structure of the questionnaire was made by adopting pre-testing and assessment of outer factor loadings and measures the internal consistency of all items in the test or scale using Cranach's Alpha. The composite reliability (CR) was tested by calculating the composite alpha and average variance extracted (AVE). The study employs partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to investigate the structured relationship between the observed and latent variables and extends the path analysis to test the hypotheses. The study reveals that corporate governance significantly and positively influences the leverage structure decision. The result intends to establish that if firms serve corporate governance, it will make the firms to manage more debt into the leverage structure decision. Results also reveal a negative and significant association between the determinants and financial leverage structure decision, and this relation signifies that when determinants tend to upturn, outside borrowing will fall into the financial leverage structure decision. The policy implications advanced from this study include the transformation of ownership structure, corporate governance, and financial policy to facilitate proper leverage structure decisions.