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 announcements in the financial press about takeovers, junk bonds, financial restructuring, initial public offerings, bankruptcies, and derivatives. In addition, there are the new recognitions 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 unrelated topics that are unified largely because they are bound together between the covers of one book. As in the previous editions, our aim is to present corporate finance as the working of a few integrated and powerful institutions.

Part 1 Overview
Part 2 Valuation and jCapital Budgeting
Part 3 Risk
Part 4 Capital Structure and Dividend Policy
Part 5 Long-Term Financing
Part 6 Options, Futures, and Corporate Finance
Part 7 Short-Term Finance
Part 8 Special Topics