This pocket-sized book is aimed at students in their first finance class at the undergraduate, MBA, or executive education level. The class is usually called "Business Finance" or "Financial Management." My sole goal is to lift your grades. I approach this goal from two different angles. First, I use 25 years of experience teaching this material to explain carefully the stumbling blocks that have consistently tripped up students year after year. Addressing these common sources of confusion gives every student every opportunity to master the material. Second, I present safe strategies I have developed to help you solve numerical problems. Although these strategies take only an extra minute to implement, they frame each numerical problem so as to increase the likelihood that you detect and fix any errors, while reducing the likelihood that you make any errors in the first place. These techniques also increase the likelihood that you earn partial credit. Note that because I focus on stumbling blocks, I necessarily skip over some simpler material that does not usually cause problems. As such, I do not cover the fine details of every topic in the class. (A list of topics covered appears below.) Similarly, I give only enough worked examples to explain concepts and techniques. I recognize that different students have different needs. For example, you might have no real interest in finance, but you need to pass the class to get your degree. Alternatively, you might be a gung-ho finance major who wants to ace the class, or an MBA or exec-ed student who does not care about grades and just wants to master the material. I have been meeting different needs in the classroom for 25 years, and my presentation here is pitched simultaneously at these different clienteles. Although this book is aimed primarily at students, the fact that I focus on essential knowledge and techniques also makes this book useful to instructors. For example, an instructor who is new to the class can use this book to quickly improve his or her understanding and teaching of the trickiest parts. The chapters of the book are as follows: Foundations, Financial Statements, TVMI (One Cash Flow), TVM II (Multiple Cash Flows), Inflation and Indices, Bonds and Interest Rates, Equities and Dividend Discount Models, Capital Budgeting I (Decision Rules), Capital Budgeting II (Cash Flows), Capital Budgeting III (Cost of Capital), Capital Budgeting IV (A Paradox), The CAPM and Interest Rates, Risk and Return, Market Efficiency, Capital Structure, and Dividends.

There is increasing pressure for all of us to take responsibility for our own financial security and wellbeing, but we often overlook how the benefits that come with a job can help us do that. Essential Personal Finance: A Practical Guide for Employees focuses on these valuable work benefits and shows how you can build on this important foundation to achieve financial security and your life goals. This unique book explores how making effective and practical use of these work benefits (such as pension scheme, life cover, sick pay, cheap loans, savings schemes and even financial coaching), means facing up to the behavioural biases we are all plagued with. Given that these can get in the way of even the best intentions, Essential Personal Finance tackles these biases head-on with practical ideas and tips for overcoming or harnessing them for good, and will help you to develop a positive and fruitful relationship with your money. With financial stress being a major cause of absenteeism and sick leave, low morale and lost productivity, the advice in this book also offers employers enormous benefits. By empowering employees through financial education and financial awareness, progressive employers will help them feel more in control of their lives, and experience less stress, resulting in higher morale and productivity. Offering a distinctive approach which combines academic insight with practical financial wisdom and tools, this is a must-have book for all employees. It will help you make the most of everything your job has to offer so you can worry less about money and live life to the full.

Hidden somewhere among all the numbers in a financial report is vitally important information about where a company has been and where it is going. This Fourth Edition is designed to help anyone who works with financial reports—but has neither the time nor the need for an in-depth knowledge of accounting—cut through the maze of accounting information to find out what those numbers really mean. In this edition an entirely new and carefully designed exhibit is used to visually illustrate the connecting links among the three key statements in a financial report (the balance sheet, the income statement and the cash flow statement). This center-piece exhibit—used throughout the text—includes a two-year comparative balance sheet to explain the cash flow statement much more effectively. Also features a new chapter on the making and changing of financial reporting rules and updated information on new legislation.

Business Finance Essentials is a text designed to provide students with an opportunity to learn the fundamentals of business finance without the additional cost of a textbook. This book has been developed with over a decade of classroom use in both face-to-face and online classes at Pittsburg State University. The goal was to create a resource to introduce students to the important elements that go into financial decision making which applies to corporations and their own personal lives in a simple framework. Whether it is learning about time value of money, bonds, capital budgeting or retirement planning, this book should make that process as straight-forward as possibe. With the explosion of Open Education Resource materials over the past few years, we saw this as a tool that could be made available to faculty as a launching point for their courses. Using Creative Commons licence that allows users to modify it to their needs with their own additions or through adding other resources, it is intended as not the final product, but the starting point. We hope that this process will keep the material current and flexible enough to help students gain not only a better grasp of finance, but also an interest in the field.

Everything you need to know about the financial world.

Most law students have never had formal coursework in accounting or finance, yet these areas are integral to so many law school courses including: Business Associations, Securities Regulations, Corporate Finance, Taxation, Banking Law, Financial Regulation, and Business Planning. With math no more difficult than high school algebra, Essential Concepts of Business for Lawyers, Third Edition fills in those gaps with an accessible and interactive presentation of accounting, finance, and financial markets. Each stand-alone chapter provides a complete lesson that will shed light on business courses in law school, as well as business situations in legal practice. New to the Third Edition: Updates for and addition of new cases that illustrate the business concepts Addition of more examples, including information related to more companies such as Google and Uber Addition of new materials on the basic microeconomic concept of supply and demand Professors and students will benefit from: A self-contained course book that supports a 2-credit course on an overview of business concepts, including accounting, finance, valuation, financial instruments, and business strategy Lessons that go beyond the definitions of terms of art and business terminology A book written at an accessible level Edited appellate cases that connect business concepts to the law and legal practice Knowledge of the basic and most essential concepts of business Materials presented in an accessible way including the use of many examples to illustrate difficult concepts Clear explanations of difficult materials and foreign concepts

Based on a popular class taught by a Harvard Business School professor. If you're not a numbers person, then finance can be intimidating and easy to ignore. But if you want to advance in your career, you'll need to make smart financial decisions and develop the confidence to clearly communicate those decisions to others. In How Finance Works, Mihir Desai--a professor at Harvard Business School and author of The Wisdom of Finance--guides you into the complex but endlessly fascinating world of finance, demystifying it in the process. Through entertaining case studies, interactive exercises, full-color visuals, and a conversational style that belies the topic, Professor Desai tackles a broad range of topics that will give you the knowledge and skills you need to finally understand how finance works. These include: How different financial levers can affect a company's performance The different ways in which companies fund their operations and investments Why finance is more concerned with cash flow than profits How value is created, measured, and maximized The importance of capital markets in helping companies grow Whether you're a student or a manager, an aspiring CFO or an entrepreneur, How Finance Works is the colorful and interactive guide you need to help you start thinking more deeply about the numbers.