Why should firms with promising investment opportunities strive to maintain a conservative capital structure, i. e., limited leverage? Why do you think many promising small businesses apparently do not follow this recommendation and are heavily indebted?

The answer is to assure funding for future assets.

The answer is because of lack of sufficient operating cash flow.

Explanation:

Companies with promising investments opportunity typically have valuable intangible assets whose value would decline sharply if the company would go into financial difficulty, its important for such company to maintain a financial flexibility that comes with a conservative capital structure to assure funding for future assets.

   Poor cash flow is when the income cash flow is insufficient to meet the outgoing cash flow needs of a business and this can also lead to inability to raise additional equity force.

the investment was $14,174.196

explanation:

a lump sum means that the father of the example made one deposit and leave it be.

we need to know the value of a capital that generated at 4.05% per year during 28 years the sum of $48,613.24

now clearing the formula to solve for capital we got:

and we reach the answer investment = $14,174.20

the third answer is correct.