Unravelling Corporate Financial Distress Predictions: A Conceptual Overview and Content Analysis

The period preceding bankruptcy is known as financial distress. The final phase of a company’s downfall, known as financial distress, occurs when there is a shortage of liquid cash. Predicting financial hardship has been a field of study by numerous scholars. Different financial hardship prediction models exist that have been investigated thus far. Consequently, the goal of this study is to examine the literature on financial distress forecasts for corporations, the financial distress impacting causes, and financial management guidelines for preventing situations of financial trouble. In addition to answering the question of how market sentiment and investor behaviour influence financial distress. According to the results of the literature review included in this work, the Altman Z-score model has been extensively employed to forecast financial difficulties in corporations. In addition, a content analysis was carried out to determine the critical themes for future research. The results additionally indicate that some of the fundamental ideas to remember in order to prevent financial hardship include the ideal amount of debt in a company’s financial structure, ongoing observation of some necessary financial measures, such as total debt to total assets, net income to total debt, and cash flow to total debt assets.