Corporate Capital Structure and Financial Distress Likelihood

This study examined corporate capital structure and financial distress likelihood of listed insurance firms in Nigeria. The specific objectives were to investigate whether long term debt asset, short term debt asset, long term debt liability, short term debt liability have significant effect on financial distress likelihood of listed insurance firms in Nigeria. The secondary source of data collection was adopted in the study where the purposive sampling technique was used to select a sample size of twenty-two (22) out of a population of one hundred and one (151) listed deposit money banks in Nigeria. Ordinary Least Square regression analysis was used in this study. The findings revealed that long term debt asset has significant effect, short term debt asset, long term debt liability have no significant effect on financial distress likelihood of listed insurance firms in Nigeria.  It was concluded that long term debt asset and short term debt asset had significant effect on financial distress likelihood while long term debt liability and short term debt liability had no significant effect on financial distress likelihood of listed insurance firms in Nigeria. It was recommended that firms should rely more on long term debt and further on equity as a source of finance so as to boost their financial performance.