Suggestions and contributions from results of this study are as follows.
First, this study can be said to have its significance and values in the fact that it disclosed factors that can give influence onto the financial structure of ocean shipping firms which have great industrial differences from manufacturing businesses and other industries while considering the environmental features before and after the financial crisis of 2008 and performed an empirical research into the correlation among those factors. Especially, it is considered to have greater significance for it suggested theological principles and solutions for sound financial system of ocean shipping firms by comparing and analyzing factors affecting the financial structure of those firms before and after the financial crisis of 2008 considering the fact that they have greater rate of liabilities and financial risk resulting from their different industrial factors from other manufacturing companies, and thus, have greater sensitivity to changes in the economic situation.
Second, by clarifying the fact that, during economic recession, ship ratio and ship turn-over ratio among other industrial characteristics gets to have closer correlation with financial structure, it is concluded that ocean shipping firms need to establish administrative strategies to increase profitability of ships and enhance creation of added value from ships although ocean shipping firms are paying more attention to management of ships for increase of profitability at the time of economic depression than they do during economic boom.
Third, it is confirmed that it is necessary to maintain the current Tonnage Tax System and other various kinds of taxation exemptions or benefits in order for ocean shipping firms to avoid financial pressure they may experience since the effective corporate tax rate gets to have significant effect on the ratio of liabilities during economic recession.
Fourth, this research has proved through empirical analysis the fact that ocean shipping firms also have the same financial structure with that of other businesses, in which higher operation profits and gains give positive influence onto financial structure, such as lower ratio of liabilities. Also, it was proved that profit margin on sales before tax, which is calculated by taking into consideration every finance costs, foreign exchange profit and loss items and other various special profit and loss items had significant adverse effects with the ration of liabilities during the serious economic recession in 2009, the standard year, and, in 2011, two years after the financial crisis. This analysis and research result tells us that the two years of period from 2009 through 2011 among five years was the most difficult period for ocean shipping companies and that it is necessary for ocean shipping firms to establish risk control system and appropriate administrative strategies to perform systematic management and control on fluctuation of foreign exchange rate and financing costs since, for such a financially hard time, finance charges including interest costs and profits and losses from transaction and translation of foreign exchange resulting from changes in foreign exchanges rate may give great influence onto their ratio of liabilities.
Fifth, it showed us the fact that ocean shipping companies with greater financial assets had relatively lower liability ratio, and thus, large or medium-scale ocean shipping firms were proved to have more sound financial structure. While appropriateness and balance of financial decisions and investment decisions don't have immediate correlation with financial structure during an economic boom, maintenance of proper balance in financial decisions and investment decisions may have close correlation with the ratio of liabilities for an economic depression. This tells us that not only provision of funds but also rational decisions on time and scale of investment in ships are also very significant factors that affect the financial risk of ocean shipping firms, and it is considered that they need to make much more careful and precise decisions on finances and investments for an economic depression.
However, limits in this study is as follows. This study was performed by taking the entire Korean ocean shipping firms as the study object, before and after the financial crisis, but number of ocean shipping firms that were doing operation continuously was small, and, therefore, the possibility cannot be excluded that selection bias of sample distribution might have influenced the research results. Especially, deviation among ocean shipping firms was huge, and, when abnormal figures were deleted, the number of samples diminished much more, and, therefore, it also cannot be denied that distributional bias still exist, and it is the limit in this study.
It is considered that, for the time to come, an additional or supplementary study should be carried out to supplement the limits of this study, by performing multilateral analyses on decisive factors of the finance of Korean ocean shipping firms, while reflecting more characteristics of ocean shipping firms.