Home > Store > Finance & Investing > Investing
The Real Cost of Capital: A Business Field Guide to Better Financial Decisions
- By Tim Ogier, John Rugman, Lucinda Spicer
- Published Aug 26, 2004 by FT Press.
- Copyright 2004
- Dimensions: 6x9
- Pages: 320
- Edition: 1st
- Book
- ISBN-10: 0-273-68874-X
- ISBN-13: 978-0-273-68874-7
Register your product to gain access to bonus material or receive a coupon.
Product Author Bios
The authors work within the UK Valuation and Strategy practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. They advise top private and public sector clients on cost of capital issues in the context of mergers and acquisitions, investment appraisal, shareholder value analysis, business strategy, price setting, and regulatory and anti-trust inquiries.
Tim Ogier is a Partner and leads the UK Economic Advisory Services team. He holds undergraduate and masters degrees in economics from the London School of Economics. Formerly Chief Economic Adviser at British Rail and author of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s UK country reports, Tim is married and lives in London.
John Rugman is the Director who leads the PwC Financial Economics team. He has a background working in the City of London in investment management and equity research, and holds an undergraduate degree in economics and a masters degree in economics and finance. He is married with two children and lives in Oxfordshire.
Lucinda Spicer is a Partner and the former head of the UK Valuation and Strategy practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. She is a Council member of the Society of Share and Business Valuers, holds an MA degree from the University of Cambridge and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. She has a background in business valuation, venture capital and tax mergers and acquisitions restructuring, and is married with children and lives in Scotland.
"This book is required reading for anyone involved in the practical issues of cost of capital decisions. It is written in a way that engages the novice, and yet challenges the professional to rethink the real issues."
Brendan Scholey, Bloomberg.
The cost of capital is the fundamental financial tool for business decision-making. It drives measures of value creation and destruction, and forms the basis of financial analysis using cash flow and other frameworks. This book is here to help the business world to use the cost of capital for real.
The Real Cost of Capital describes the key issues in understanding and using the cost of capital today, taking principles from the world of managerial finance and putting them into the context of major investment decisions.
Should, for example, a company use its own cost of capital to appraise new investments and acquisitions? What cost of capital might a US company use when appraising an investment in, say, the Philippines? For a typical investment, which type of risk is more important – specific risk or systematic risk? How should these risks be reflected in, say, a venture capital situation? Debt is cheaper than equity – so why don’t companies raise more debt than they do? Most practitioners use the weighted average cost of capital ("WACC") in valuation and appraisal – but when should an alternative approach be used? This book will help you find the answers.
The Real Cost of Capital is required reading for anyone involved in the practical issues of cost of capital decisions. It brings together the latest academic thinking with practical requirements in a real-life context, and the authors have used their combined experience of advising governments and international blue-chip companies to bring readers up to date with current issues.
The Real Cost of Capital includes chapters on choosing models, calculating the cost of capital using real-life data sources, and calculating the cost of capital in an international context (a subject not usually covered in academic texts). It also has chapters and worked examples on the practical application of the cost of capital in business valuations, high-tech situations and the wide range of premia and discounts that can be applied to the cost of capital.
The book has an associated website www.costofcapital.net which contains some current links. The site also gives access to tax rate information and financial data relevant to using cost of capital around the world. The objective is to make sure that the corporate planner, student, adviser or decision maker, when she/he is on the road, can simply open the book or dial in and take advantage of a wealth of decision-making support, without the pain of extended academic study.
|
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Excellent, By
This review is from: The Real Cost of Capital: A Business Field Guide to Better Financial Decisions (Paperback)
I am not exactly sure why this book has never been reviewed. I found it in a public library. It is superb. I am doing a cost of capital project, and I happened to have checked this book out before. I found that it summed up many things from all the finance classes I have taken, including the assumptions that are always used in finance theory. Some people just take it that these assumptions are always correct. Obviously this is not so. I will not go into detail--just buy the book. I will, and this shows how it is really a good idea for an author to send out books to public libraries. I would not have known about this otherwise, and this is the first review of Amazon--which is another good source to find out about unknown books. Sometimes you can find out things from publisher's description on Amazon, but this is all very time-consuming.
The Real Cost Of Capital, By John Samuel (Dallas, Tx) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Real Cost of Capital: A Business Field Guide to Better Financial Decisions (Paperback)
I checked out this book from the library and am planning to buy my own copy. The discount rate is crucial in every capital allocation decision but most people don't fully appreciate what the number represents. This book summarizes key financial theory regarding cost of capital in very readable terms. Recommended for any corporate financial analyst.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Describes financial theory but does not reflect the real world conditions,
This review is from: The Real Cost of Capital: A Business Field Guide to Better Financial Decisions (Paperback)
If you are looking for a book that summarizes financial theory developed in the 20th century (such as CAPM etc), this book is for you. If you are however looking for a book that introdues you to the decisions made in the real world based on the way that people in the real world behave (rather than how the theories say that they should behave), you need to give this book a pass. I was looking for an introduction to the way businesses operate and make decisions based on the fast changing world around but got a book that is full of theories that do not pertain to the reality.
|
Table of Contents
Author's acknowledgements
Publisher's acknowledgements
Prologue: The cost of capital world is a real world
Chapter 1: Risk and Return Revisited
Chapter 2: CAPM @ Work
Chapter 3: The Great EMRP Debate
Chapter 4: CAPM is Dead: Long Live CAPM
Chapter 5: The Cost of Debt and Optimal Capital Structure
Chapter 6: International WACC and Country Risk
Chapter 7: Cash Flows, the Dot.Com Bubble, and All That
Chapter 8: Using the Cost of Capital in Business Valuations
Chapter 9: International Valuation and Appraisal
Chapter 10: Premia and Discounts
Epilogue
Index
Downloadable Sample Chapter
This book includes free shipping!
- Request an Instructor or Media review copy.
- Corporate, Academic, and Employee Purchases
- International Buying Options
Get access to thousands of books and training videos about technology, professional development and digital media from more than 40 leading publishers, including Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall, Cisco Press, IBM Press, O'Reilly Media, Wrox, Apress, and many more. If you continue your subscription after your 30-day trial, you can receive 30% off a monthly subscription to the Safari Library for up to 12 months. That's a total savings of $199.
