Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Part I. Where are we now -- 1. In the beginning -- Part II. Where do we want to be -- 2. Planning to get there -- 3. Understanding the business -- 4. Understanding the risks -- Part III. How do we get there -- 5. Finding the money -- 6. Is this the right idea -- Part IV. How do we know that we've arrived -- 7. Measuring business performance -- 8. Analyzing business performance -- Part V. Where to next -- 9. Are we creating value for owners -- 10. Business mergers and valuation -- Epilogue -- Appendix -- Notes -- Index.

HKBU library

YT2025 M08

In a fast-changing world, brimming with social and economic uncertainty, financial information plays a vital role in the life of an organization and does so with two sets of eyes. One set looks back to see what has happened. This is the accounting function, which is simply about the recording of events and the production of the financial reports that satisfy the stewardship responsibility of management. The other set looks forward to determine the most appropriate strategic direction for an organization, guiding managerial actions, motivating behaviors, and creating and supporting the cultural values necessary to achieve an organization's strategic objectives. This book is all about the second set of eyes, which are the lenses of financial management, that help organizations plot their ways through an environment filled with opportunities and dangers. For students and aspiring managers, as well as those who already have management responsibilities, this book provides an insight, through the eyes of the characters of a start-up company, of some of the ideas and models that help to identify the possible strategies capable of maximizing an organization's value, which is the same as making the owners as wealthy as possible, to determine how to finance the organization in the most proper way, to allocate the collected capital in the most effective way, to monitor the implementation of the chosen strategy to see whether it is meeting the planned objectives, and to reasonably decide on the reinvestment and distribution of profits.