Corporate Finance, Eleventh Edition
This book has been written for the introductory courses in corporate finance at the MBA level and for the intermediate courses in many undergraduate programs. Some instructors will find our text appropriate for the introductory course at the undergraduate level as well.
STEPHEN A. ROSS Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Stephen A. Ross is the Franco Modigliani Professor of Financial Economics at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the most widely published authors in finance and economics, Professor Ross is recognized for his work in developing the arbitrage pricing theory, as well as for having made substantial contributions to the discipline through his research in signaling, agency theory, option pricing, and the theory of the term structure of interest rates, among other topics. A past president of the American Finance Association, he currently serves as an associate editor of several academic and practitioner journals and is a trustee of CalTech.
RANDOLPH W. WESTERFIELD Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California Randolph W. Westerfield is Dean Emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and is the Charles B. Thornton Professor of Finance Emeritus. Professor Westerfield came to USC from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he was the chairman of the finance department and member of the finance faculty for 20 years. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Oak Tree Capital Mutual Funds. His areas of expertise include corporate financial policy, investment man- agement, and stock market price behavior.
JEFFREY F. JAFFE Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania Jeffrey F. Jaffe has been a frequent contributor to the finance and economics literatures in such jour- nals as the Quarterly Economic Journal, The Journal of Finance, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, The Journal of Financial Economics, and The Financial Analysts Journal. His best-known work concerns insider trading, where he showed both that corporate insiders earn abnormal profits from their trades and that regulation has little effect on these profits. He has also made contributions concerning initial public offerings, regulation of utilities, the behavior of market makers, the fluctuation of gold prices, the theoretical effect of inflation on interest rates, the empirical effect of inflation on capital asset prices, the relationship between small-capitalization stocks and the January effect, and the capital structure decision.
BRADFORD D. JORDAN Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky Bradford D. Jordan is professor of finance and holder of the Richard W. and Janis H. Furst Endowed Chair in Finance at the University of Kentucky. He has a long-standing interest in both applied and theoretical issues in corporate finance and has extensive experience teaching all levels of corporate finance and financial manage- ment policy. Professor Jordan has published numerous articles on issues such as cost of capital, capital structure, and the behavior of security prices. He is a past president of the Southern Finance Association, and he is coauthor of Fundamentals of Investments: Valuation and Management, 7th edition, a leading investments text, also published by McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
The teaching and the practice of corporate finance are more challenging and exciting than ever before. The last decade has seen fundamental changes in financial markets and financial instruments. In the early years of the 21st century, we still see announce- ments in the financial press about takeovers, junk bonds, financial restructuring, initial public offerings, bankruptcies, and derivatives. In addition, there are the new recogni- tions of “real” options, private equity and venture capital, subprime mortgages, bailouts, and credit spreads. As we have learned in the recent global credit crisis and stock market collapse, the world’s financial markets are more integrated than ever before. Both the theory and practice of corporate finance have been moving ahead with uncommon speed, and our teaching must keep pace.
These developments have placed new burdens on the teaching of corporate finance. On one hand, the changing world of finance makes it more difficult to keep materials up to date. On the other hand, the teacher must distinguish the permanent from the temporary and avoid the temptation to follow fads. Our solution to this problem is to emphasize the modern fundamentals of the theory of finance and make the theory come to life with contemporary examples. Increasingly, many of these examples are outside the United States.
All too often the beginning student views corporate finance as a collection of unre- lated topics that are unified largely because they are bound together between the covers of one book. We want our book to embody and reflect the main principle of finance: Namely, that good financial decisions will add value to the firm and to shareholders and bad financial decisions will destroy value. The key to understanding how value is added or destroyed is cash flows. To add value, firms must generate more cash than they use. We hope this simple principle is manifest in all parts of this book.
I needed this book for my MBA finance course and I borrowed it first. I ended up regretting that decision because this book is a keeper, so I bought it and am very glad I did. This book is a good reference to have after you've graduated from college and forgotten some of the intricacies of finance. It is very well written, very easy to understand, and you don't need any prior knowledge of differential equations to understand the topics and their application. I particularly like how the authors present the concepts of risk and return by first examining individual stocks and then moving on to a small portfolio. You could have just had a chapter called "Modern Portfolio Theory" and loaded it with all sorts of mathematical proofs and talked about the Markowitz Sphere. Instead, they are taking a craw-walk-run approach here, making this important material much more accessible. They take a similar approach throughout the book and just do an excellent job of making things very accessible.
This book is a great start for any financial enthusiast looking to learn basic financial concepts and financial management. With the explanatory solved examples, it helps in better understanding. There are also real-life experiences to develop problem-solving skills.
I have a love-hate relationship with this book. Whether you take this online or in class, I would recommend that you get the tangible book, even if your "course key" includes an eBook. For me, mainly because it was online, Finance was a challenge. This is the next level of accounting and will require your full attention and use of all the resources provided to you. Some of the examples were difficult to follow i.e. how the writer came to certain conclusions or solutions, so I had to re-read it often to understand the material. The rental version didn't include a passcode, so I had to purchase it separately, and the only option was automatically included with the ebook. It was expensive so I used my credit card to make the payments but I would recommend this in addition to an included ebook or just the passcode if finances don't come naturally to you.
