Final answer:
Ruth Corp.'s goal to maximize shareholder wealth guides managerial decisions and helps set clear business objectives. Proper financial planning is crucial, including performance monitoring and capital requirements assessment. Outsiders are more willing to invest as firms establish themselves and show potential for profit due to widely available information on their operations.
Step-by-step explanation:
Maximizing Shareholder Wealth and Financial Planning
Ruth Corp.'s board of directors' statement that the firm's goal is to maximize shareholder wealth over time represents the firm's commitment to increasing the value for its shareholders. The pursuit of this goal should help guide the company's decisions, including the avoidance of unnecessary diversification or expansion into unfamiliar areas that might dilute the company's focus and performance. When Ruth Corp. tells its operating managers that it wants to attain a 40% market share, a 15% return on equity (ROE), and an 8% earnings growth rate, it is setting clear business objectives that define success and provide a target to strive for.
In terms of financial planning, it's true that management must monitor operations to detect and adjust for deviations from the financial plan. A performance-based mangement compensation system should ideally encourage long-term success rather than just short-term achievements. Finally, after forecasting financial statements, the firm must determine the necessary capital to support its plans.
As a firm establishes itself and its business strategy becomes recognised as profitable, the need for potential investors to know the individual managers diminishes due to widely available information about company products, revenues, costs, and profits. Therefore, external investors like bondholders and shareholders become more willing to provide financial capital to the firm. Patterns in how businesses raise financial capital can often be explained by the concept of imperfect information, where insiders of a firm typically have more knowledge about its future profitability than outsiders who provide capital.