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# Conclusion

In Sections 1 and 2, you explored the main financial resources available to business organisations and considered their suitability in terms of specific business structure and goals. You should now be familiar with the key issues to be considered when choosing between internal or external financing, and between short-term or the long-term finance.

In Section 3 you learned about the main features of corporate stock and bond financing. Although they are both external means for long-term financing, these two sources of finance carry different commitments for the companies, and different expectations from the investors. You also looked at aspects of public sector financing.

Finally, Section 4 focused on the main ways in which businesses spend the finance they have raised. You were introduced to revenue and capital expenditures, dividends and share repurchases, as well as to expenditures for external growth strategies such as M&As.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course B294 Financial analysis and decision making.

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OpenLearn - Organisations and the financial system
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