Book Description Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice, 3rd Edition, the website www.vernimmen.com and the Vernimmen.com newsletter are all written and created by an author team who are both investment bankers/corporate financiers and academics. This book covers the theory and practice of Corporate Finance from a truly European perspective. It shows how to use financial theory to solve practical problems and is written for students of corporate finance and financial analysis and practising corporate financiers. Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice, 3rd Edition is split into four sections covering the basics of financial analysis; the basic theories behind valuing a firm; the major types of financial securities (equity, debt & options) and, finally, financial management; how to organise a company's equity capital, buying and selling companies, M&A, bankruptcy and cash flow management. Key features include: A section on financial analysis – a Corporate Financier must understand a company based on a detailed analysis of its accounts. Large numbers neglected this approach during the last stock market bubble and were caught in the crash that inevitably followed. How many investors took the trouble to read Enron's annual report?
Reading List for Intellectual Killers Recently there was a thread on what books one should read to assist in the development of a successful career in finance. I strongly believe in balancing your library with pure 'finance books', pleasure reads, and classics, with a strong bias towards the classics. You will learn about. Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice (Wiley Series in Finance) Applied Corporate Finance: A User's Manual Damodaran on Valuation: Security Analysis for Investment and Corporate Finance (Wiley Finance). Corporate Finance Theory and Practice. Aswath Damodaran. From: $13.72. Corporate Finance, Study Guide and Problems Manual: Theory.
Those who did found that it spoke volumes! End of Chapter Summary, Questions and Answers, Glossary, European Case Studies A supporting Website with free access to statistics, a glossary & lexicon; articles, notes on financial transactions, basic financial figures for more than 10,000 European and US listed companies, thesis topics, a bibliography; case studies, Q&A; A letter box for your questions to the authors – a reply guaranteed within 72 hours A free monthly newsletter on Corporate Finance sent out to subscribers to the site. 'The ebook version does not provide access to the companion files'.
For other uses, see. Risk is the potential of gaining or losing something of value.
Values (such as, emotional well-being, or financial wealth) can be gained or lost when taking risk resulting from a given action or inaction, foreseen or unforeseen (planned or not planned). Risk can also be defined as the intentional interaction with.
Uncertainty is a potential, unpredictable, and uncontrollable outcome; risk is a consequence of action taken in spite of uncertainty. Is the subjective judgment people make about the severity and probability of a risk, and may vary person to person. Any human endeavour carries some risk, but some are much riskier than others. Firefighters at work The cites the earliest use of the word in English (in the spelling of risque from its from French original, 'risque' ) as of 1621, and the spelling as risk from 1655.
It defines risk as: (Exposure to) the possibility of loss, injury, or other adverse or unwelcome circumstance; a chance or situation involving such a possibility. Risk is an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has an effect on at least one project objective. (This definition, using project terminology, is easily made universal by removing references to projects). The probability of something happening multiplied by the resulting cost or benefit if it does. (This concept is more properly known as the 'Expectation Value' or 'Risk Factor' and is used to compare levels of risk). The probability or threat of quantifiable damage, injury, liability, loss, or any other negative occurrence that is caused by external or internal vulnerabilities, and that may be avoided through preemptive action. Finance: The possibility that an actual return on an investment will be lower than the expected return.
Insurance: A situation where the probability of a variable (such as burning down of a building) is known but when a mode of occurrence or the actual value of the occurrence (whether the fire will occur at a particular property) is not. (Reference needed) A risk is not an uncertainty (where neither the probability nor the mode of occurrence is known), a peril (cause of loss), or a hazard (something that makes the occurrence of a peril more likely or more severe). Securities trading: The probability of a loss or drop in value. Trading risk is divided into two general categories: (1) affects all securities in the same class and is linked to the overall capital-market system and therefore cannot be eliminated by diversification. (2) Non-systematic risk is any risk that isn't market-related. Also called non-market risk, extra-market risk or diversifiable risk.: Product of the consequence and probability of a hazardous event or phenomenon.
For example, the risk of developing cancer is estimated as the incremental probability of developing cancer over a lifetime as a result of exposure to potential carcinogens (cancer-causing substances). International Organization for Standardization The publication (2009) / ISO Guide 73:2002 definition of risk is the 'effect of uncertainty on objectives'. In this definition, uncertainties include events (which may or may not happen) and uncertainties caused by ambiguity or a lack of information. It also includes both negative and positive impacts on objectives. Many definitions of risk exist in common usage, however this definition was developed by an international committee representing over 30 countries and is based on the input of several thousand subject matter experts. Other Very different approaches to risk management are taken in different fields, e.g. 'Risk is the unwanted subset of a set of uncertain outcomes' (Cornelius Keating).
Risk can be seen as relating to the of uncertain future events. For example, according to, risk is: the probable frequency and probable magnitude of future loss. In computer science this definition is used. OHSAS (Occupational Health & Safety Advisory Services) defines risk as the combination of the probability of a hazard resulting in an adverse event, and the severity of the event. In risk is defined as 'the potential that a given will exploit of an or group of assets and thereby cause harm to the organization'.
Is often defined as the unpredictable variability or of returns, and this would include both potential better-than-expected and worse-than-expected returns. References to negative risk below should be read as also applying to positive impacts or opportunity (e.g. For 'loss' read 'loss or gain') unless the context precludes this interpretation. The related terms ' and ' are often used to mean something that could cause harm. Practice areas Risk is ubiquitous in all areas of life and risk management is something that we all must do, whether we are managing a major organisation or simply crossing the road. When describing risk however, it is convenient to consider that risk practitioners operate in some specific practice areas.
Economic risk Economic risks can be manifested in lower incomes or higher expenditures than expected. The causes can be many, for instance, the hike in the price for raw materials, the lapsing of deadlines for construction of a new operating facility, disruptions in a production process, emergence of a serious competitor on the market, the loss of key personnel, the change of a political regime, or natural disasters. Health Risks in personal health may be reduced by actions that decrease early causes of illness or by actions after a person has clearly measured clinical signs or symptoms recognised as risk factors. Tertiary reduces the negative impact of an already established disease by restoring function and reducing disease-related complications. Ethical medical practice requires careful discussion of with individual patients to obtain for secondary and tertiary prevention efforts, whereas public health efforts in primary prevention require education of the entire population at risk. In each case, careful communication about risk factors, likely outcomes and must distinguish between causal events that must be decreased and associated events that may be merely consequences rather than causes. In epidemiology, the lifetime risk of an effect is the, also called incidence proportion over an entire lifetime.
Health, safety, and environment In terms of occupational health & safety management, the term 'risk' may be defined as the most likely consequence of a hazard, combined with the likelihood or probability of it occurring. Health, safety, and environment (HSE) are separate practice areas; however, they are often linked. The reason for this is typically to do with organizational management structures; however, there are strong links among these disciplines.
One of the strongest links between these is that a single risk event may have impacts in all three areas, albeit over differing timescales. For example, the uncontrolled release of radiation or a toxic chemical may have immediate short-term safety consequences, more protracted health impacts, and much longer-term environmental impacts.
Events such as Chernobyl, for example, caused immediate deaths, and in the longer term, deaths from cancers, and left a lasting environmental impact leading to birth defects, impacts on wildlife, etc. Over time, a form of risk analysis called environmental risk analysis has developed. Environmental risk analysis is a field of study that attempts to understand events and activities that bring risk to human health or the environment.
Human health and environmental risk is the likelihood of an adverse outcome (See ). As such, risk is a function of hazard and exposure. Hazard is the intrinsic danger or harm that is posed, e.g.
The toxicity of a chemical compound. Exposure is the likely contact with that hazard.
Therefore, the risk of even a very hazardous substance approaches zero as the exposure nears zero, given a person's (or other organism's) biological makeup, activities and location (See ). Another example of health risks are when certain behaviours, such as, increase the likelihood of contracting HIV. Social aspects Individual risk perception and risk taking can also be influenced by social factors. A study using representative household data in the US, Italy and Austria finds evidence that risk taking levels can be influenced by the immediate social environment and by the welfare regime of a state (i.e. Different support networks). The study also finds that these factors can interact. Cass Sunstein holds that risk not only is a social construe, but also a correct diagnosis is vital to understand its evolution.
State should appeal to the net of experts to avoid populism or risk-neglect, which consists in biased information respecting to the probabilities of risk. Information technology and information security. Main article: Information technology risk, or IT risk, IT-related risk, is a risk related to information technology. This relatively new term was developed as a result of an increasing awareness that information security is simply one facet of a multitude of risks that are relevant to IT and the real world processes it supports. The increasing dependencies of modern society on information and computers networks (both in private and public sectors, including military) has led to new terms like and. Main articles: and Information security means protecting information and from unauthorised access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, perusal, inspection, recording or destruction. Information security grew out of practices and procedures of.
Information security has grown to information assurance (IA) i.e. Is the practice of managing risks related to the use, processing, storage, and transmission of information or data and the systems and processes used for those purposes. While focused dominantly on information in digital form, the full range of IA encompasses not only digital but also analogue or physical form. Information assurance is interdisciplinary and draws from multiple fields, including accounting, fraud examination, and, in addition to computer science. So, is narrowly focused on computer security, while information security extends to risks related to other forms of information (paper, microfilm).
Information assurance risks include the ones related to the consistency of the business information stored in IT systems and the information stored by other means and the relevant business consequences. Insurance Insurance is a risk treatment option which involves risk sharing. It can be considered as a form of contingent capital and is akin to purchasing an in which the buyer pays a small premium to be protected from a potential large loss.
Insurance risk is often taken by insurance companies, who then bear a pool of risks including market risk, credit risk, operational risk, interest rate risk, mortality risk, longevity risks, etc. Business and management Means of assessing risk vary widely between professions. Indeed, they may define these professions; for example, a doctor manages medical risk, while a civil engineer manages risk of structural failure.
A professional is usually focused on risk assessment and mitigation (by the professional on behalf of client, public, society or life in general). In the workplace, incidental and exist.
Incidental risks are those that occur naturally in the business but are not part of the core of the business. Inherent risks have a negative effect on the operating profit of the business. In human services The experience of many people who rely on human services for support is that 'risk' is often used as a reason to prevent them from gaining further independence or fully accessing the community, and that these services are often unnecessarily risk averse. 'People's autonomy used to be compromised by institution walls, now it's too often our risk management practices', according to. Michael Fischer and Ewan Ferlie (2013) find that contradictions between formal risk controls and the role of subjective factors in human services (such as the role of emotions and ideology) can undermine service values, so producing tensions and even intractable and 'heated' conflict. High reliability organisations (HROs) A (HRO) is an organisation that has succeeded in avoiding catastrophes in an environment where can be expected due to risk factors and. Most studies of HROs involve areas such as nuclear aircraft carriers, air traffic control, aerospace and nuclear power stations.
Organizations such as these share in common the ability to consistently operate safely in complex, interconnected environments where a single failure in one component could lead to catastrophe. Essentially, they are organisations which appear to operate 'in spite' of an enormous range of risks. Some of these industries manage risk in a highly quantified and enumerated way.
These include the and, where the possible failure of a complex series of engineered systems could result in highly undesirable outcomes. The usual measure of risk for a class of events is then: R = probability of the event × the severity of the consequence. The total risk is then the sum of the individual class-risks; see below. In the nuclear industry, consequence is often measured in terms of off-site radiological release, and this is often banded into five or six-decade-wide bands. The risks are evaluated using fault tree/event tree techniques (see ). Where these risks are low, they are normally considered to be 'broadly acceptable'.
A higher level of risk (typically up to 10 to 100 times what is considered broadly acceptable) has to be justified against the costs of reducing it further and the possible benefits that make it tolerable—these risks are described as 'Tolerable if ', where ALARP stands for 'as low as reasonably practicable'. Risks beyond this level are classified as 'intolerable'.
The level of risk deemed broadly acceptable has been considered by regulatory bodies in various countries—an early attempt by UK government regulator and academic used the example of hill-walking and similar activities, which have definable risks that people appear to find acceptable. This resulted in the so-called Farmer Curve of acceptable probability of an event versus its consequence. The technique as a whole is usually referred to as probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) (or probabilistic safety assessment, PSA). See for an example of this approach.
Main article: In finance, risk is the chance that the return achieved on an investment will be different from that expected, and also takes into account the size of the difference. This includes the possibility of losing some or all of the original investment. In a view advocated by Damodaran, risk includes not only ' but also 'upside risk' (returns that exceed expectations).
Some regard the of the historical returns or average returns of a specific investment as providing some historical measure of risk; see modern portfolio theory. Financial risk may be market-dependent, determined by numerous market factors, or operational, resulting from fraudulent behaviour (e.g. Recent studies suggest that endocrine levels may play a role in risk-taking in financial decision-making. A fundamental idea in finance is the relationship between risk and return (see ). The greater the potential return one might seek, the greater the risk that one generally assumes. A free market reflects this principle in the pricing of an instrument: strong demand for a safer instrument drives its price higher (and its return correspondingly lower) while weak demand for a riskier instrument drives its price lower (and its potential return thereby higher).
For example, a US Treasury bond is considered to be one of the safest investments. In comparison to an investment or speculative grade corporate bond, US Treasury notes and bonds yield lower rates of return. The reason for this is that a corporation is more likely to default on debt than the US government. Because the risk of investing in a corporate bond is higher, investors are offered a correspondingly higher rate of return. A popular is (VaR). There are different types of VaR: long term VaR, marginal VaR, factor VaR and shock VaR. The latter is used in measuring risk during the extreme market stress conditions.
In finance, risk has no single definition. Artzner et al. Write 'we call risk the investor's future net worth'. In Novak 'risk is a possibility of an undesirable event'. In financial markets, one may need to measure, information timing and source risk, probability model risk, operational risk and if there are regulatory or civil actions taken as a result of '.
With the advent of automation in financial markets, the concept of 'real-time risk' has gained a lot of attention. Aldridge and Krawciw define real-time risk as the probability of instantaneous or near-instantaneous loss, and can be due to flash crashes, other market crises, malicious activity by selected market participants and other events.
A well-cited example of real-time risk was a US $440 million loss incurred within 30 minutes by Knight Capital Group (KCG) on 1 August 2012; the culprit was a poorly-tested runaway algorithm deployed by the firm. Regulators have taken notice of real-time risk as well. Basel III requires real-time risk management framework for bank stability.
It is not always obvious if are ' (purchasing/selling a financial instrument specifically to reduce or cancel out the risk in another investment) or 'speculation' (increasing measurable risk and exposing the investor to catastrophic loss in pursuit of very high windfalls that increase expected value). Some people may be ', i.e.
Their 's second derivative is positive. Such an individual willingly pays a premium to assume risk (e.g.
Buys a lottery ticket). Financial auditing. AT YOUR OWN RISK Popular labelling Security risk management involves protection of assets from harm caused by deliberate acts. A more detailed definition is: 'A security risk is any event that could result in the compromise of organizational assets i.e. The unauthorized use, loss, damage, disclosure or modification of organizational assets for the profit, personal interest or political interests of individuals, groups or other entities constitutes a compromise of the asset, and includes the risk of harm to people. Compromise of organizational assets may adversely affect the enterprise, its business units and their clients. As such, consideration of security risk is a vital component of risk management.'
Human factors. Main articles: and One of the growing areas of focus in risk management is the field of where behavioural and organizational psychology underpin our understanding of risk based decision making.
This field considers questions such as 'how do we make risk based decisions?' , 'why are we irrationally more scared of sharks and terrorists than we are of motor vehicles and medications?' In, regret (and anticipation of regret) can play a significant part in decision-making, distinct from (preferring the status quo in case one becomes worse off). Is a fundamental problem with all forms of risk assessment. In particular, because of (our brains get overloaded, so we take mental shortcuts), the risk of extreme events is discounted because the probability is too low to evaluate intuitively. As an example, one of the leading causes of death is caused by – partly because any given driver frames the problem by largely or totally ignoring the risk of a serious or fatal accident. For instance, an extremely disturbing event (an attack by hijacking, or ) may be ignored in analysis despite the fact it has occurred and has a nonzero probability.
Or, an event that everyone agrees is inevitable may be ruled out of analysis due to greed or an unwillingness to admit that it is believed to be inevitable. These human tendencies for error and often affect even the most rigorous applications of the and are a major concern of the. All must consider, and notational bias: No group of people assessing risk is immune to ': acceptance of obviously wrong answers simply because it is socially painful to disagree, where there are. Framing involves other information that affects the outcome of a risky decision.
The right prefrontal cortex has been shown to take a more global perspective while greater left prefrontal activity relates to local or focal processing. From the Theory of Leaky Modules McElroy and Seta proposed that they could predictably alter the framing effect by the selective manipulation of regional prefrontal activity with finger tapping or monaural listening. The result was as expected. Rightward tapping or listening had the effect of narrowing attention such that the frame was ignored. This is a practical way of manipulating regional cortical activation to affect risky decisions, especially because directed tapping or listening is easily done. Psychology of risk taking A growing area of research has been to examine various psychological aspects of risk taking. Researchers typically run randomised experiments with a treatment and control group to ascertain the effect of different psychological factors that may be associated with risk taking.
Thus, positive and negative feedback about past risk taking can affect future risk taking. In an experiment, people who were led to believe they are very competent at decision making saw more opportunities in a risky choice and took more risks, while those led to believe they were not very competent saw more threats and took fewer risks. Maintenance The concept of risk-based maintenance is an advanced form of.
In case of chemical industries, apart from probability of failure, consequences of failure is also very important. Therefore, the selection of maintenance policies should be based on risk, instead of reliability.
Risk-based maintenance methodology acts as a tool for maintenance planning and decision making to reduce the probability of failure and its consequences. In risk-based maintenance decision making, the maintenance resources can be used optimally based on the risk class (high, medium, or low) of equipment or machines, to achieve tolerable risk criteria. Cybersecurity Closely related to information assurance and security risk, cybersecurity is the application of system security engineering in order to address the compromise of company cyber-assets required for business or mission purposes. In order to address cyber-risk, cybersecurity applies security to the supply chain, the design and production environment for a product or service, and the product itself in order to provide efficient and appropriate security commensurate with the value of the asset to the mission or business process. Risk assessment and analysis. Main article: The terms risk attitude, appetite, and tolerance are often used similarly to describe an organisation's or individual's attitude towards risk-taking.
One's attitude may be described as risk-averse, risk-neutral, or risk-seeking. Risk tolerance looks at acceptable/unacceptable deviations from what is expected. Risk appetite looks at how much risk one is willing to accept.
There can still be deviations that are within a risk appetite. For example, recent research finds that insured individuals are significantly likely to divest from risky asset holdings in response to a decline in health, controlling for variables such as income, age, and out-of-pocket medical expenses. Gambling is a risk-increasing investment, wherein money on hand is risked for a possible large return, but with the possibility of losing it all. Purchasing a lottery ticket is a very risky investment with a high chance of no return and a small chance of a very high return.
In contrast, putting money in a bank at a defined rate of interest is a risk-averse action that gives a guaranteed return of a small gain and precludes other investments with possibly higher gain. The possibility of getting no return on an investment is also known as the. Risk as a vector quantity Hubbard also argues that defining risk as the product of impact and probability presumes, unrealistically, that decision-makers are.
A risk-neutral person's utility is proportional to the of the payoff. For example, a risk-neutral person would consider 20% chance of winning $1 million exactly as desirable as getting a certain $200,000. However, most decision-makers are not actually risk-neutral and would not consider these equivalent choices. This gave rise to and. Hubbard proposes to instead describe risk as a quantity that distinguishes the probability and magnitude of a risk. Risks are simply described as a set or function of possible payoffs (gains or losses) with their associated probabilities. This array is collapsed into a scalar value according to a decision-maker's.
List of related books This is a list of books about risk issues. Title Author(s) Year Acceptable Risk Baruch Fischhoff, Sarah Lichtenstein, Steven L. Derby, and Ralph Keeney 1984 Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk 1996 At risk: Natural hazards, people's vulnerability and disasters, Terry Cannon, Ian Davis, and Ben Wisner 1994 Urbano Fra Paleo 2009 Dangerous Earth: An introduction to geologic hazards Barbara W. Murck, Brian J. Skinner, Stephen C. Porter 1998 Disasters and Democracy Rutherford H. Platt 1999 Earth Shock: Hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes and other forces of nature 1993 Human System Response to Disaster: An Inventory of Sociological Findings Thomas E.
Drabek 1986 Judgment Under Uncertainty: heuristics and biases, and 1982 Mapping Vulnerability: disasters, development, and people Greg Bankoff, Georg Frerks, and Dorothea Hilhorst 2004 Man and Society in Calamity: The Effects of War, Revolution, Famine, Pestilence upon Human Mind, Behavior, Social Organization and Cultural Life 1942 Mitigation of Hazardous Comets and Asteroids Michael J.S. Belton, Thomas H. Morgan, Nalin H. Samarasinha, Donald K. Yeomans 2005 Natural Disaster Hotspots: a global risk analysis Maxx Dilley 2005 Natural Hazard Mitigation: Recasting disaster policy and planning David Godschalk, Philip Berke, David Brower, and Edward J. Kaiser 1999 Natural Hazards: Earth’s processes as hazards, disasters, and catastrophes Edward A.
Keller, and Robert H. Blodgett 2006 Normal Accidents. Living with high-risk technologies 1984 Paying the Price: The status and role of insurance against natural disasters in the United States Howard Kunreuther, and Richard J. Roth 1998 Planning for Earthquakes: Risks, politics, and policy Philip R.
Berke, and Timothy Beatley 1992 Practical Project Risk Management: The ATOM Methodology David Hillson and Peter Simon 2012 Reduction and Predictability of Natural Disasters John B. Rundle, William Klein, Don L. Turcotte 1996 Regions of Risk: A geographical introduction to disasters Kenneth Hewitt 1997 Risk Analysis: a quantitative guide David Vose 2008 Risk: An introduction ( ) Bernardus Ale 2009 Risk and Culture: An essay on the selection of technical and environmental dangers, and 1982 Socially Responsible Engineering: Justice in Risk Management ( ), and P. Aarne Vesilind 2006 Swimming with Crocodiles: The Culture of Extreme Drinking Marjana Martinic and Fiona Measham (eds.) 2008 The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA 1997 The Environment as Hazard Ian Burton, and 1978 The Social Amplification of Risk Nick Pidgeon, Roger E.
Kasperson, and 2003 What is a Disaster? New answers to old questions Ronald W. Perry, and 2005 Floods: From Risk to Opportunity ( Red Book Series) Ali Chavoshian, and Kuniyoshi Takeuchi 2013 The Risk Factor: Why Every Organization Needs Big Bets, Bold Characters, and the Occasional Spectacular Failure 2014 See also.