Stock Markets and Corporate Finance: A Primer

Stock Markets and Corporate Finance: A Primer examines the nature of the stock market and its implications for corporate management. In the historical context of financial institutions and business finance, students are stimulated to learn that traditional totems of corporate finance can no longer be presented as dogma, but rather as exceedingly frail models of reality. At the core of this text is the philosophy that financial institutions and corporate/business finance are more satisfactorily understood in relation to one another. This revised text from the 2017 Stock Markets and Corporate Finance has allowed for a reshaping of the material with the deletion of a number of chapters considered "interesting" but overly academic. This additional space has allowed for an update on the chapter "Financial Institutions and a History of Stock Markets" as well as accounting for the circumstances of a post-COVID-19 era. The chapter "Financial Planning and Working Capital" has been reworked to demonstrate how a firm's financial management team might interrogate its financial accounts to assess the viability of the firm and the management of its working capital. From reading this book, the reader will achieve insight into the behaviour and importance of financial institutions and firms as they are presented in the media, and how they impact on their own lives. Exercises and solutions are designed to re-enforce chapter material, while animated PowerPoint presentations are available as supplementary material to the book.