Foundations of Financial Management (The Mcgraw-Hill/Irwin Series in Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate)

It is well-written, concise, and employs some very straightforward, easy-to-follow graphs/diagrams. Also, both the formulas and the exercises at the end of each chapter are quite useful.

The only reason that I did not give it a 5-star rating is because some of the chapters did not use enough "real-world examples" or hypothetical situations in some of the more challenging lessons. This might better aid those students who are new to finance or simply need another angle to better grasp the idea.

KEY BENEFIT: Keown allows readers to see the big picture by letting them understand the logic that drives finance rather than memorizing formulas. Very user friendly, the basic pedagogical approach to the presentation of new tools and techniques is “say it” then “illustrate it with an example” and reinforce with lots of “real world examples”. As well as including strong international coverage some key topics are: Financial Markets and Interest Rates; Understanding Financial Statements and Cash Flows; Time Value of Money; Risk and Return; Bond and Stock Valuation; Capital-Budgeting Techniques and Practice; Cash Flows and Other Topics in Capital Budgeting; and Current Asset Management. For an enduring understanding of the basic tools and fundamental principles upon which finance is based.

The second edition of The Nonprofit Sector provides a novel , comprehensive, cross-disciplinary perspective on nonprofit organizations and their role and function in society. This new, updated edition keeps pace with industry trends and advances as well as with the changing interests and needs of students, practitioners, and researchers. As before, every chapter has been written to stand on its own, providing sufficient background for the reader to follow the argument without referring to other chapters—allowing readers to selectively choose those chapters that are most relevant to a particular course, interest, or issue.

The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook includes twenty-seven new or updated chapters. Relevant chapters from the previous edition have been refined, and new chapters have been added to fill in gaps, making this the authoritative reference for all who want an accessible, perceptive, and all-inclusive rendering of the nonprofit sector. The contributors—prominent scholars in their respective fields—carefully reflect upon the variety of changes in the rapidly growing world of nonprofits, examining a wide array of organizations, international issues, social science theories, and philanthropic traditions and covering a broad range of topics including the history and scope of nonprofit activities in the United States and abroad, the relation of nonprofits to the marketplace, government-nonprofit issues, key activities of nonprofits, aspects of giving to and joining nonprofits, and nonprofit mission and governance. For anyone who wishes to have a deeper understanding of the nonprofit sector, this remains the essential guide.

From reviews of the first edition:

"[This book] is the closest thing to a 'bible' of nonprofit sector research and state-of-the-art social science knowledge as currently exists."—Dennis R. Young, Public Administration Review

"Invaluable to anyone currently engaged in research or policy decisions involving nonprofit organizations or, for that matter, considering becoming involved.”—Jerald Schiff, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management

"An exceptionally useful resource.”—Mark D. Hughes, The Philanthropist

I run a medium size business in a big city. If you want to ?de-risk? a company, you need to learn from managers who are already doing it and doing it well. This book has very detailed cases about the risk management programs at companies like Microsoft and DuPont with managers telling their own stories. The book is short on fancy theories and long on practical ideas.

I admit I was surprised to see Chase bank among these elite companies. Chase wrote off $500 million because of Enron. But you have to wonder how much more they would have written off without a good risk management program. No one ever said these systems are perfect. The Chase chapter even describes two big problems the bank had with their bookkeeping and how they were fixing them.

From being a subject at the margins of finance, economics, accounting, law and management, corporate governance is now becoming a subject of more central concern to each of these disciplines, and increasingly is regarded as a subject that is at the heart of business and management studies. This book brings together the most influential writing in corporate governance drawn from finance, economics, accounting, law and management in an integrative and interdisciplinary way. br br Intended as a companion volume to International Corporate Governance that surveys the global development of corporate governance policy and practice, this book Theories of Governance provides a valuable grounding in the classical theories underpinning contemporary analysis of corporate governance: br br * The origins of the modern business enterprise br * The separation of ownership and control br * How economic activity is organized through firms br * The managerial revolution in business br * Agency problems of managers representing investors br * Risk management and the conception of the company as a series of transactions br * Shareholder value as the ultimate objective and measure of corporate success br * Managerial hegemony and nominal boards of directors br * Stewardship theory and company board performance br * Stakeholder theory and the conception of the company as a set of relationships br * The globalization of corporations, equity markets, and corporate governance br * Convergence and divergence in corporate governance systems br * The impact of corporate objectives upon corporate stakeholders

considerable amount of so called "numbers crunching" is involved in reviewing this text. As such, the book serves the analytic student optimally. The text is devoid of the most complicated analytics inherent in "quantitatively oriented texts". There is a good appendix on the use of financial calculators ,as well as, present value calculations and other useful knowledge supplemental to the study of finance. This book would be most useful to students planning their careers as financial analysts, corporate planners or private entrepreneurs.

Topics included are on basic valuation of various securities and projects using discounted cash flows, capital budget management, liquidity management, etc. I'm still learning from it after school. There simply wasn't enough time to fully cover everything in the book that I would have wanted. Now I'm ready to tackle more advanced corporate finance books/materials.

This is an introductory book for someone who may be interested in becoming a financial analyst but is obviously geared to the educational market for use in schools. The academic slant limits its applicability somewhat. Although it may give a stock market player who wants to start understanding the systematic process involved in the valuation of securities on a cash flow basis some insight for example, discussion on valuation by multiples like P/Es is virtually absent.