How to find if a public company has taken out a loan?
Somewhat.  The balance sheet will include liabilities which as Michael Kjörling points out would tell you the totals for the debt which would often be loans or bonds depending on one's preferred terminology.  However, if the company's loan was shorter than the length of the quarter, then it may not necessarily be reported is something to point out as the data is accurate for a specific point in time only. My suggestion is that if you have a particular company that you want to review that you take a look at the SEC filing in full which would have a better breakdown of everything in terms of assets, liabilities, etc. than the a summary page.  http://investor.apple.com/ would be where you could find a link to the 10-Q that has a better breakdown though it does appear that Apple doesn't have any bonds outstanding.  There are some companies that may have little debt due to being so profitable in their areas of business.
I didn't say only the IPO I just said public offerings. Trades between secondary investors would be taxed at a higher level. I also understand the difference between loaning money to a company and investing in equity.  Personally I think that loans are underused in today's investment world because people are too focused on getting the most out of the few big winners. "There are quite some options, but without additional information, I can only provide examples. Last year I had the option to buy a house, but I decided against it because in my area it is getting harder and harder every year to sell it at a reasonable price. But if I had bought a house, my mother would have lent me the money, with me paying it back to her over the years on 3% interest. So it would have been some kind of a private loan. But my mom would never have taken ownership of the house, since it was not her intention to own it in any way. (Does your dad intend to own the house and rent it to you? If yes, and if you are comfortable with renting instead of buying, then this is an option.) The second option, the one we discarded because of the additional cost, is that I could have taken a loan, paying 4.5% interest to the bank, which would then pay under 1% to my mom, and keep the rest. Banks always want to make profit, and this profit has to come from somewhere - from the difference between the interest rates. If your dad has 230k on the bank, and you owe 230k to the bank, you are better off if you keep the bank out - at least as long as your dad is comfortable with lending you money, and you are comfortable with owing him money. (my gf would never borough money from her mother, because her mother would always play the ""you are in my debt"" card - on each and every visit, and whenever she needed help in any way...) So the key is: What does your dad feel comfy with - and what do you feel comfy with. If possible, keep the banks out, but set up a written contract between you and your dad." Eh? Companies use the research from public institutions, this is commonish knowledge.         &gt;I'm not disparaging public universities that do the research, but you do realize that they sell their patents to companies, right? That's how these big research schools get the big research budgets that they have. Without being able to monetize a new finding, research dollars would dry right up.         Yes that's what I'm talking about. Public institutions bare the full brunt of cutting edge research. "I made a throwaway for this...   I work in IT for the government. I was tasked with finding a vendor that provided a particular kind of software. My bosses expected it would take me 4-6 months to source out companies, go through all the paperwork and process to work with them, try to get them to understand what we need, and them aid them in implementing their software on our stack.   Well, that seemed like an enormous waste of time (and ridiculously boring), so instead I wrote the software on my own time over the course of 4 months, built a subscription model around it, and incorporated a company. I've since sold the subscription based model to a number of other government bodies and clients. The government body I work for has around 250 employees, and I recently sold a subscription to a peer government body with over 1500 employees.   I built a free subscription tier that my current company uses so that i'm not taking any payment from them, to avoid any conflicts of interest, and built the entire project on my own time and resources.   The funny thing is, the software product I built easily beat out all the competitors in blind tests, and no one that I work for could ever imagine that I am capable of even being employed by such a company, forget building the whole stack and founding the company. In fact, all of upper management has been impressed with the software I ""found"", and how well it has worked... there has been a ton of positive feedback on it since it was launched.   I'm basically just sitting on this project (that is mostly self sustaining), until I can just cash out - which should be quite soon.   **Edit** to the people warning me what i'm doing is illegal, a few key points    - 1) The public sector can't legally profit from anything, my job is to limit cost, not make a profit... which leads to...    - 2) I'm not charging the government body I work for, it's a free implementation devoid of contract. I also ensured I do all the work on my own time, not company time. I live somewhere where most government employees work multiple jobs, so this isn't uncommon. In fact, my government body actually does often hire contractors who are also employed. So not only did I create the service on my own time, I gave it to my employer for free (other companies pay, of course)    - 3) I don't live in the US, things are different where I am. It is certainly not illegal, and I would even argue that (given this is the public sector) it is even somewhat ethical. My work saved my employer (the tax payer) a significant amount of money, which is a net positive. The service is of high quality, and I did not break any employment agreements or laws in the process.     - 4) I hired a lawyer to double check everything.     - 5) I absolutely am not in any way using any proprietary information for profit. I'm not even using my contacts through work as leverage for sales - everything so far has been cold calls and positive references from other clients. This was a key part of the project." Generally these are public companies set up to do some particular thing and get revenue from use.  And yes, the elected representatives signed the municpalities on to these things.   If you co-sign a loan, sooner or later you may have to pay up. I've had some time to investigate this and so I will answer my own question, as it may be of help to others. One of the first things to do is examine all bank statements, as this may reveal in-goings and out-goings from a previously unknown source. Secondly, get any mail redirected. Unfortunately, mail redirection is far from perfect in the UK but at least it increases one's chances of uncovering an unknown asset. Lastly, there is Landmark FAS who will do a search for a fee of around £175. for starters get a cheap easy accounting software pack like quickbooks and have the salesmen train you on it's use and set-up. the 50k you put into the company will count as paid up share capital. then any future withdrawal from company account will show as loan to director. No.    Net profit is calculated after taxes. Loan interest is an expense, so it will result in the company paying less taxes (it acts as a tax shield), so net profit should still be positive. How much will depend on tax and interest rate.    Only the portion of the $1.000.000 that correspond to interest is an expense. Principal payments are not.