「釋義」

所謂杠桿，從狹義上講，是指資產(chǎn)與股東權(quán)益之比；從廣義講，則是指通過負(fù)債實(shí)現(xiàn)以較小的資本金控制較大的資產(chǎn)規(guī)模，從而擴(kuò)大盈利能力或購買力。

自從次貸危機(jī)爆發(fā)以來，“去杠桿化”一詞遍從國外一直流行到國內(nèi)。所謂“去杠桿化”，是指公司或者個(gè)人減少使用金融杠桿，把原來通過各種方式“借”到的錢退還出去的這樣一個(gè)潮流。

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「應(yīng)用場景」

衰退前去杠桿

Deleverage Before a Downturn

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哈佛商學(xué)院的瑞貝卡·韓德森經(jīng)常提醒學(xué)生，“第一條規(guī)則是：別把公司掏空?！睋Q言之，最重要的一點(diǎn)是，別把錢都花了。因?yàn)榘殡S衰退的往往是銷售額下降和更少的運(yùn)營現(xiàn)金，而渡過衰退需要靈活的財(cái)務(wù)管理。如果亞馬遜在科網(wǎng)泡沫前沒有籌集足夠的現(xiàn)金，那之后的選擇就相當(dāng)有限了。但是亞馬遜能夠平衡對其他初創(chuàng)企業(yè)的投資損失，并在同年年末推出了Amazon Marketplace作為第三方賣家平臺，因此在衰退期間和之后都保持了擴(kuò)張，進(jìn)入廚房、旅游和服裝等新細(xì)分市場以及國家（加拿大）。

Rebecca Henderson (of Harvard Business School) likes to remind her students, “Rule one is: Don’t crash the company.” That means, first and foremost, don’t run out of money. Because a recession usually brings lower sales and therefore less cash to fund operations, surviving a downturn requires deft financial management. If Amazon hadn’t raised all that money prior to the dot-com bust, its options would have been much more limited. Instead, it was able to absorb losses in its investments in other start-ups and also launch Amazon Marketplace, its platform for third-party sellers, later that year. It further expanded during and after the recession into new segments (kitchens, travel, and apparel) and markets (Canada).

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研究表明，在經(jīng)濟(jì)衰退期間，債務(wù)水平高的公司尤其容易受到影響。在2017年的一項(xiàng)研究中，麻省理工學(xué)院斯隆管理學(xué)院的沙維爾·吉羅德和紐約大學(xué)斯特恩商學(xué)院的霍格爾·穆勒研究了美國多郡的公司停業(yè)率與相關(guān)失業(yè)率和下跌房價(jià)之間的關(guān)系?？傮w而言，房價(jià)下跌越多，消費(fèi)需求降幅越大，進(jìn)而導(dǎo)致更多公司停業(yè)，失業(yè)率上升。但研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，這種影響在債務(wù)水平最高的公司中最為明顯。他們根據(jù)衰退前杠桿的高低來劃分公司（杠桿高低通過債務(wù)與資產(chǎn)比率的變化來衡量），絕大部分由于需求下降而關(guān)閉的公司高度杠桿化。

Companies with high levels of debt are especially vulnerable during a recession, studies show. In a 2017 study, Xavier Giroud (of MIT’s Sloan School of Management) and Holger Mueller (of NYU’s Stern School of Business) looked at the relationship between business closures and associated unemployment and falling housing prices in various U.S. counties. Overall, the more housing prices declined, the more consumer demand fell, driving increased business closures and higher unemployment. But the researchers found that this effect was most pronounced among companies with the highest levels of debt. They divided up companies on the basis of whether they became more or less leveraged in the run-up to the recession, as measured by the change in their debt-to-assets ratio. The vast majority of businesses that shuttered because of falling demand were highly leveraged.

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以上文字選自《哈佛商業(yè)評論》中文版2019年5月刊《戰(zhàn)勝大衰退》

沃爾特·弗里克（Walter Frick）丨文