Krueger and Linke (1994) proposed a more analytical ‘‘spanning portfolio’’ approach to the divisional cost of capital problem. Their approach is based on an interpretation of the APT, and utilizes factor analysis to identify systematic risk measures that are calculated from firms’ accounting cash flow per share. Based on the estimated factor loading, portfolios of publicly traded assets are created that, theoretically, are proxies for the target firm or division. Krueger and Linke found that their approach was effective in tests similar to the ones we perform for cluster analysis. The spanning portfolio approach is computationally complex and has not been widely accepted as a practical approach to the problem. The problem may lay with the fact that the method relies on a very complex theoretical development based on the equilibrium APT and permits unlimited margin and short selling to create the spanning portfolios. As such, it loses any of the intuition of the ‘‘pure-play’’ approach, in that assets in the spanning portfolios may be completely unrepresentative of the target in terms of measured systematic risk.