ABSTRACT

The study examined effect of Capital structure and Dividend policy decision on firm 's performance on Nigeria stock exchange in Nigeria, having Access Bank Plc as the study area. However, the specflcobjectives pursued were to; determine the effect of debt financing on the firm 's performance, examine the effect of equity financing on the firm 's performance, ascertain the effect of dividend payout ratio on the firm 's performance. The study adopted ex-post facto research design. Data generated from the annual reports and accounts ofAccess Bank from 2008 — 2017 were analysed using mu1tip1e regression analysis. The statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 23 was used to execute the analysis. The result of the analysis provided the findings that; debt financing has a sign ficant effect on performance of firms in Nigeria, equity financing has a significant effect on performance offirms in Nigeria, dividend payout ratio has a signfIcant effect on performance of firms in Nigeria. Based on the findings made above, the study recommends that firms (both highly and lowly geared) should take into cognizance the amount of leverage incurred because it is a major determinant of firm 's performance, this is obvious in both the highly geared and lowly geared firms, Also, firms should use more of equity than debt in financing their business activities, in as much as the value of a business can be enhanced using debt capitals, it gets to a point that it becomes detrimental to the value of the business.