Talking about story lines allows me to set the first them of this book. This book tells a story, which essentially summarizes the corporate finance view of the world. It classifies all decisions made by any business into three groups--decisions on where to invest the resouces or funds the business has raised, either internally or externally (the investment decision)on where and how to raise funds to finance these investments (the financing decision), and decision on how much and in what form to return funds back to the owners (the dividend decision). As I see it, the first principles of corporate finance can be summarized in Figure 1, which also lays out a site map for the book. Every section of this book relates to some part of this picture, and each chapter is introduced with emphasis on that portion that will be analyzed in that chapter. (Note the chapter numbers below each section.) Put another way, there are no sections of this book that are not traceable to this framwork.

Chapter 1 The Foundations
Chapter 2 The Objective In Decision Marking
Chapter 3 The Basics Of Risk
Chapter 4 Risk Measurement And Hurdle Rates In Practice
Chapter 5 Measuring Return On Investments
Chapter 6 Project Interactions,Side Costs,And Side Benefits
Chapter 7 Capital Structure: Overview Of The Financing Decision
Chapter 8 Capital Structure: The Optimal Financing Mix
Chapter 9 Capital Structure: The Financing Details
Chapter 10 Dividend Policy
Chapter 11 Analyzing Cash Returned To Stockholders
Chapter 12 Valuation: Principles And Practice