Working capital management is very crucial in this period of global financial
turmoil. This is because illiquidity is prevalent world wide necessitating that
effective and efficient management of any available cash will be needed to
ensure that company breaks even and survives this distressed time since credit is
not easily come by. This article presents empirical evidence of the effect of
working capital management and liquidity on corporate profits using a crosssectional
time series data for the period 2005-2006. This micro-data were
analyzed using descriptive statistics and an OLS methodology. The authors find a
positive effect of inventory conversion period (ICP), debtors collection period
(DCP); and a negative effect of cash conversion period (CCP), creditors payment
period (CPP), on return on assets (a mirror of corporate profitability). We
discover that CCP with a wrong sign is the most significant precision variable in
influencing profits and leads corporate profitability in Nigeria. It is closely
followed by ICP and then CPP is third in importance in affecting profitability and
liquidity in Nigeria. The paper therefore recommends (1) that firms should
promptly collect cash from credit sales, (2) that excess cash should be reinvested
in short-term securities (assets) to generate profits and (3) that since there exists
high sales turnover in the Nigerian emerging markets, government policy should
target multinational companies (MNCs) for invitation to participate in investing
in Nigeria by creating the right legal and regulatory framework to enable them
enter the market for possible FDI, IPI, and FPI injections into the Nigerian
domestic economy