When we first wrote Essentials of
Corporate Finance, we thought there might be a small niche for a briefer
book that really focused on what students with widely varying backgrounds and
interests needed to carry away from an introductory finance course. We were
wrong. There was a huge niche! What we learned is that our text closely matches
the needs of instructors and faculty at hundreds of schools across the country.
As a result, the growth we have experienced through the first six editions of Essentials
has far exceeded anything we thought possible.
With the seventh edition of Essentials of Corporate Finance, we
have continued to refine our focus on our target audience, which is the
undergraduate student taking a core course in business or corporate finance.
This can be a tough course to teach. One reason is that the class is usually
required of all business students, so it is not uncommon for a majority of the
students to be nonfi -nance majors. In fact, this may be the only finance
course many of them will ever have. With this in mind, our goal in Essentials
is to convey the most important concepts and principles at a level that is
approachable for the widest possible audience.
To achieve our goal, we have worked to distill the subject down to
its bare essentials(hence, the name of this book), while retaining a decidedly
modern approach to finance. We have always maintained that the subject of
corporate finance can be viewed as the working of a few very powerful
intuitions. We also think that understanding the “why” is just as important, if
not more so, than understanding the “how,” especially in an introductory course.
Based on the gratifying market feedback we have received from our previous editions,
as well as from our other text, Fundamentals of Corporate Finance (now
in its ninth edition), many of you agree.
By design, this book is not encyclopedic. As the table of contents
indicates, we have a total of 18 chapters. Chapter length is about 30 pages, so
the text is aimed squarely at a single-term course, and most of the book can be
realistically covered in a typical semester or quarter. Writing a book for a
one-term course necessarily means some picking and choosing, with regard to
both topics and depth of coverage. Throughout, we strike a balance by
introducing and covering the essentials (there’s that word again!) while
leaving some more specialized topics to follow-up courses.
The other things we have always stressed, and have continued to
improve with this edition, are readability and pedagogy. Essentials is
written in a relaxed, conversational style that invites the students to join in
the learning process rather than being a passive information absorber. We have
found that this approach dramatically increases students’ willingness to read
and learn on their own. Between larger and larger class sizes and the ever-growing
demands on faculty time, we think this is an essential (!) feature for a text
in an introductory course.
Throughout the development of this book, we have continued to take a
hard look at what is truly relevant and useful. In doing so, we have worked to
downplay purely theoretical issues and minimize the use of extensive and elaborate
calculations to illustrate points that are either intuitively obvious or of
limited practical use.
As a result of this process, three basic themes emerge as our
central focus in writing Essentials of Corporate Finance:
An Emphasis on Intuition We always try to separate and explain the
principles at work on a commonsense, intuitive level before launching into any
specifics. The underlying ideas are discussed first in very general terms and
then by way of examples that illustrate in more concrete terms how a financial
manager might proceed in a given situation.
A Unified Valuation Approach We treat net present value (NPV) as the
basic concept underlying corporate finance. Many texts stop well short of
consistently integrating this important principle. The most basic and important
notion, that NPV represents the excess of market value over cost, often is lost
in an overly mechanical approach that emphasizes computation at the expense of
comprehension. In contrast, every subject we cover is firmly rooted in valuation,
and care is taken throughout to explain how particular decisions have valuation
effects.
A Managerial Focus Students shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that financial
management concerns management. We emphasize the role of the financial manager
as decision maker, and we stress the need for managerial input and judgment. We
consciously avoid “black box” approaches to finance, and, where appropriate,
the approximate, pragmatic nature of financial analysis is made explicit,
possible pitfalls are described, and limitations are discussed.
Today, as we prepare to once again enter the market, our goal is to
stick with and build on the principles that have brought us this far. However,
based on an enormous amount of feedback we have received from you and your
colleagues, we have made this edition and its package even more flexible than
previous editions. We offer flexibility in coverage and pedagogy by providing a
wide variety of features in the book to help students to learn about corporate
finance. We also provide flexibility in package options by offering the most extensive
collection of teaching, learning, and technology aids of any corporate finance text.
Whether you use just the textbook, or the book in conjunction with other
products, we believe you will find a combination with this edition that will
meet your current as well as your changing needs.
Stephen A. Ross
Randolph W. Westerfield
Bradford D. Jordan
