Strategy, Value and Risk: A Guide to Advanced Financial Management

The final quarter of the twentieth century witnessed the beginnings of a transformation - the decline of the industrial economy and rise of the information economy. Innovations in information technology facilitated the globalization of markets, production and capital markets, which spurred competition across business and finance. This transformation has created a global economy that is increasingly centered around the knowledge infrastructure, new business models, intangible assets and services, open innovation and network economies.

Strategy as a search for value is the discovery and development of sources of profitability to maximize firm value. Regardless of the trends in the global economy, the central management issue is still the same. To achieve sustainable shareholder value, firms have to simultaneously deliver on operations in the short-term, while investing in the long-term to maintain continuity.

Strategy, Value and Risk: A Guide to Advanced Financial Management examines this issue within the context of innovation, the evolution of industry sectors, and financial analysis, corporate finance, quantitative finance and risk management concepts. The short-term is addressed within the context of financial statement analysis and forecasts, stocks and flows, and ROCE and ROIC ratios. The long-term is examined using investment analysis techniques that include advanced accounting, DCF, ENPV and real options, a corporate finance concept that applies financial options theory to real assets using quantitative and derivative methods. These techniques are applied to real assets within the context of strategy in case studies that cover corporate IT, energy, pharmaceutical drug development, climate-change and growth, media and abandonment, and commercial real estate to illustrate the concepts and issues.

This 3rd Edition features new strategy and analysis of performance sections, and updated introduction, value, risk and case study sections, that together provides a framework to examine the interrelationships between strategy, value and risk.