For the first time the complete financial history of Berkshire Hathaway is available under one cover in chronological format. Beginning at the origins of the predecessor companies in the textile industry, the reader can examine the development of the modern-day conglomerate year-by-year and decade-by-decade, watching as the struggling textile company morphs into what it has become today. This comprehensive analysis distils over 10,000 pages of research material, including Buffett's Chairman's letters, Berkshire Hathaway annual reports and SEC filings, annual meeting transcripts, subsidiary financials, and more. The analysis of each year is supplemented with Buffett's own commentary where relevant, and examines all important acquisitions, investments, and other capital allocation decisions. The appendices contain balance sheets, income statements, statements of cash flows, and key ratios dating back to the 1930s, materials brought together for the first time. The structure of the book allows the new student to follow the logic, reasoning, and capital allocation decisions made by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger from the very beginning. Existing Berkshire shareholders and long-time observers will find new information and refreshing analysis, and a convenient reference guide to the decades of financial moves that built the modern-day respected enterprise that is Berkshire Hathaway.

Drawing upon current cutting-edge theories, knowledge and research findings, this Handbook provides an analysis of the interaction between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), entrepreneurs and financial institutions globally. The contributors consider regional and international perspectives within and between Europe, North America, New Zealand, the Middle East, as well as South, Central and East Asia on a chapter-by-chapter basis. In so doing, they provide a contextualized, up-to-date snapshot of research into entrepreneurial finance across the world. This book is aimed at both established and emergent researchers, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students looking for avenues of future research into entrepreneurial finance. It will also be of use to policymakers and practitioners seeking a global perspective in their work. Contributors: M. Akoorie, H. Al-Dajani, R. Baldock, Z. Bika, T. Botelho, C.G. Brush, D. Deakins, D. Demirba , S. Demirba , L.F. Edelman, R.T. Harrison, S. Heilbrunn, J.G. Hussain, N. Kushnirovich, J. Li, C. Mac an Bhaird, S. Mahmood, T.S. Manolova, C. Mason, H. Matlay, M. Nitani, D. North, I. Peiris, A. Riding, N. Sandhu, J.M. Scott, P. Sinha, M. Subalova, S. Talbot, G. Whittam

We are only in the early stages of a broader revolution that will impact every aspect of the global economy, including commerce and government services. Coming financial technology innovations could improve the quality of life for all people. Over the past few decades, digital technology has transformed finance. Financial technology (fintech) has enabled more people with fewer resources, in more places around the world, to take advantage of banking, insurance, credit, investment, and other financial services. Marion Laboure and Nicolas Deffrennes argue that these changes are only the tip of the iceberg. A much broader revolution is under way that, if steered correctly, will lead to huge and beneficial social change. The authors describe the genesis of recent financial innovations and how they have helped consumers in rich and poor countries alike by reducing costs, increasing accessibility, and improving convenience and efficiency. They connect the dots between early innovations in financial services and the wider revolution unfolding today. Changes may disrupt traditional financial services, especially banking, but they may also help us address major social challenges: opening new career paths for millennials, transforming government services, and expanding the gig economy in developed markets. Fintech could lead to economic infrastructure developments in rural areas and could facilitate emerging social security and healthcare systems in developing countries. The authors make this case with a rich combination of economic theory and case studies, including microanalyses of the effects of fintech innovations on individuals, as well as macroeconomic perspectives on fintech's impact on societies. While celebrating fintech's achievements to date, Laboure and Deffrennes also make recommendations for overcoming the obstacles that remain. The stakes-improved quality of life for all people-could not be higher.

This handbook is a comprehensive and up to date work of reference that offers a survey of the state of financial geography. With Brexit, a global recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as new financial technology threatening and promising to revolutionize finance, the map of the financial world is in a state of transformation, with major implications for development. With these developments in the background, this handbook builds on this unprecedented momentum and responds to these epochal challenges, offering a comprehensive guide to financial geography. Financial geography is concerned with the study of money and finance in space and time, and their impacts on economy, society and nature. The book consists of 29 chapters organized in six sections: theoretical perspectives on financial geography, financial assets and markets, investors, intermediation, regulation and governance, and finance, development and the environment. Each chapter provides a balanced overview of current knowledge, identifying issues and discussing relevant debates. Written in an analytical and engaging style by authors based on six continents from a wide range of disciplines, the work also offers reflections on where the research agenda is likely to advance in the future. The book's key audience will primarily be students and researchers in geography, urban studies, global studies and planning, more or less familiar with financial geography, who seek access to a state-of-the art survey of this area. It will also be useful for students and researchers in other disciplines, such as finance and economics, history, sociology, anthropology, politics, business studies, environmental studies and other social sciences, who seek convenient access to financial geography as a new and relatively unfamiliar area. Finally, it will be a valuable resource for practitioners in the public and private sector, including business consultants and policy-makers, who look for alternative approaches to understanding money and finance.

The book is motivated by the disruptions introduced by the financial crisis and the many attempts that have followed to propose new ideas and remedies. Assembling contributions by authors from a variety of backgrounds, this collection illustrates the potentials resulting from the marriage of financial economics, complexity theory and an out-of-equilibrium view of the economic world. Challenging the traditional hypotheses that lie behind financial market functioning, new evidence is provided about the hidden factors fuelling bubbles, the impact of agents' heterogeneity, the importance of endogeneity in the information transmission mechanism, the dynamics of herding, the sources of volatility, the portfolio optimization techniques, the financial innovation and the trend identification in a nonlinear time-series framework. Presenting the advances made in financial market analysis, and putting emphasis on nonlinear dynamics, this book suggests interdisciplinary methodologies for the study of well-known stylised facts and financial abnormalities. This book was originally published as a special issue of The European Journal of Finance.

The scope of the study reported in this book entails understanding the constraints and providing potential diagnostics to Africa's leather sector, which is otherwise globally, one of the most lucrative agro-based industries in the world, estimated at over US$ 130Billion. One of the principle core thematic aspects of the leather sector is, characteristically, its long value chain with multiple socio-economic dimensions. These entail employability, creation of wealth, gender parity and rural development. Thusly, in an effort to stimulate scholarly discussion, the study argues that preemptively, the problems facing the leather value chain stratums are high losses, low value addition initiatives and unexplored opportunities that are synonymous with the Africa's leather industry. Indeed, the results of the research conceptualized opportunity management as a critical panacea towards value addition strategy for the leather sector in developing countries. In dealing with this concept, the book evaluated the various value chains phases and identified nine specific issues and variables drawn between value addition and the main leather strata. With this background, the study posed a main question and four sub questions to closely expound on related hypotheses and in lieu pursue four thematic aspects: trade, productivity, competitiveness, and innovation covered in twelve chapters of the book. Conclusively, the book manages to successfully conceptualize as a novelty that opportunity management is integral towards developing a leather value addition strategy for the developing countries with particular emphasis to Africa.

Cryptocurrencies have had a profound effect on financial markets worldwide. This edited book aims to explore the economic implications of the use of cryptocurrencies. Drawing from chapter contributors from around the world, the book will be a valuable resource on the economics of cryptocurrencies. The intended audience is composed of academics, corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, government leaders, consultants and policy makers worldwide. Over the past few years, the topic of cryptocurrencies has gained global attention and has been the subject of discussion in various news media, in policy-making bodies and government entities, and in financial institutions, classrooms and boardrooms. Despite widespread interest, much remains unknown on what the economic implications of cryptocurrencies are. This book enhances the reader's understanding of cryptocurrencies, its impact on industry and its implications on the political and economic environment. Drawing from chapter contributions from leading academics and thought leaders from around the world, this book is the definitive guide on the economics of cryptocurrencies. There is scarcity of well conceived, academically grounded literature on the impact of cryptocurrencies on industry, politics and economics. This pioneering book provides up-to-date and in-depth analysis on the subject. The book will be appealing to academic communities, business professionals and entrepreneurs in their quest for better understanding the challenges and opportunities brought about by cryptocurrencies. Consultants, government officials and policy makers will find the information helpful in defining strategic pathways into the future.

The Financial Crisis was a cross-sector crisis that fundamentally affected modern society. Regulation, as a concept, was both blamed for allowing the crisis to happen, but also tasked with developing and implementing solutions in the wake of the crash. In this book, a number of specialists from a range of fields have contributed their insights into the effect of the Financial Crisis upon the regulatory frameworks affecting their fields, how regulators have responded to the Crisis, and then what this may mean for the future of regulation within those industries. These analyses are joined by a picture of past financial crises - which reveals interesting patterns - and then analyses of architectural regulatory models that were fundamentally affected by the Crisis. The book aims to allow sector specialists the freedom to share their insights so that, potentially, a broader picture can be identified. Providing an interesting and thought-provoking account of this societally impactful era, this book will help the reader develop a more informed understanding of the potential future of financial regulation. The book will be of value to researchers, students, advanced level students, regulators, and policymakers.

This workbook is needed because it cuts the learning curve in half for the novice and assists experienced practitioners to better organize their valuation process. It is organized in standard recognized and easily identified sections that are quickly accessible. It can be used as a companion workbook to all general valuation books. It is an organized resource for checklists, reports, information requests and other tools to assist valuation practitioners in organizing their engagements. The workbook follows the valuation engagement format and covers the intricacies of a valuation. Tools including checklists and flowcharts and are included in each section. It includes over 300 exercises organized by major areas to increase the learning process. This workbook has updated sections on S Corps, discounts for lack of marketability, cost of capital resources and applications, report writing, individual vs. corporate tax rates, depositions and trials, and capitalized cash flow vs. discounted cash flow methods.

Computational finance is increasingly important in the financial industry, as a necessary instrument for applying theoretical models to real-world challenges. Indeed, many models used in practice involve complex mathematical problems, for which an exact or a closed-form solution is not available. Consequently, we need to rely on computational techniques and specific numerical algorithms. This book combines theoretical concepts with practical implementation. Furthermore, the numerical solution of models is exploited, both to enhance the understanding of some mathematical and statistical notions, and to acquire sound programming skills in MATLAB (R), which is useful for several other programming languages also. The material assumes the reader has a relatively limited knowledge of mathematics, probability, and statistics. Hence, the book contains a short description of the fundamental tools needed to address the two main fields of quantitative finance: portfolio selection and derivatives pricing. Both fields are developed here, with a particular emphasis on portfolio selection, where the author includes an overview of recent approaches. The book gradually takes the reader from a basic to medium level of expertise by using examples and exercises to simplify the understanding of complex models in finance, giving them the ability to place financial models in a computational setting. The book is ideal for courses focusing on quantitative finance, asset management, mathematical methods for economics and finance, investment banking, and corporate finance.

In the past China's capital market featured prevalent state ownership and a weak legal environment. It has, however, achieved very substantial development in the past two decades. China has surpassed Japan as the world's second-largest stock market and has also emerged as a leading player in green bonds and Fintech markets. The chapters in this book provide insights on Chinese listed firms and advance the understanding of China's unique institutions. Some important questions are covered including the governance role of foreign investors in partially privatized firms, the financial implications of political connections, the "Chinese model" of commercial banks and regulatory reforms that promote the marketization of the stock markets, among others. These studies have important implications for other emerging economies, on the recent China-US trade conflicts and about the Trump administration's complaints about the role of the Chinese government in capital markets. This book selectively includes the most influential articles from two special issues of The European Journal of Finance, which were based on selections of papers presented at a series of conferences on the Chinese Capital Markets.

This book delves into the many innovative changes that the financial industry has undergone in recent years. The authors investigate these developments in a holistic manner and from a wide range of perspectives: both public and private, business and consumer, regulators and supervisors. Initially, they set the framework of their analysis by discussing innovation cycles in financial services. Thereafter, they tackle the issue of financial innovations and their consequences for financial stability. They then review the new approaches to financial consumers' protection, which emerged in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The authors underline the fact that this new approach is heavily influenced by the recent innovative drive in the financial industry. Next, they switch their attention to the public sector, examining the innovative processes in monetary policy and central banks, structural innovations in the supervisory models and systems, and they assess some specific supervisory challenges regarding blockchain and the application of mathematics in the supervisory capacity. Additionally, the book examines a range of issues related to the private sector, such as recent developments regarding risk transferring mechanisms on the financial market, artificial intelligence and natural language processing for regulatory filings, the development of process management in insurance companies and other innovative products on the market. Finally, Innovation in Financial Services discusses how the digital transformation of the financial system impacts the interaction between the public and private sectors. The book is intended for graduate and postgraduate level students, researchers, public sector officers, as well as financial sector practitioners.

Behavioral Corporate Finance provides instructors with a comprehensive pedagogical approach for teaching students how behavioral concepts apply to corporate finance. The primary goal is to identify the key psychological obstacles to value maximizing behavior, along with steps that managers can take to mitigate the effects of these obstacles.

For undergraduate corporate finance courses The five key principles for the foundations of finance Foundations of Finance retains its foundational approach to the key concepts of finance, bolstered by real-world vignettes, cases, and problem exercises. Utilising five principles, which are presented at the beginning of the book and applied throughout, the authors introduce a multi-step approach to financial problem solving that appeals to students' (at all levels) math and numerical skills. As with previous editions, the 10th Edition, Global Edition focuses on valuation and opens every chapter with a vignette based on financial decisions faced by contemporary, real-world companies and firms. Revised and updated, the text features new lecture videos, financial thinking, user feedback, and changes inspired by the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 in the United States of America, so students are well equipped to effectively deal with financial problems in an ever-changing financial environment.

Over recent years the insurance industry has faced a period of rapid change and consolidation, with recent natural and man-made disasters highlighting the problems that the industry faces. Yet this has also been a time of opportunity with the traditional role of insurance giving way to its classification as a asset class. This has resulted in insurance risks now being priced and exchanged on the markets.

In this book, the authors analyze the convergence between the insurance industry and the capital markets. They sumarize the main trends and issues and analyze past events within the industry. Thus, they demonstrate that the current market pressures on insurance companies do not not just create challenges but also new opportunities.

Standard corporate evaluation approaches are improved by trendy innovation, especially as it concerns technological scale up and environmental issues such as digital networking or ESG compliance. Whereas traditional firm appraisal follows institutional guidelines and best practices, frontier research still must define the boundaries of these trendy issues, linking a strong theoretical background to practical advances that still need fine-tuning. This book, written by an academic who is also a senior consultant, combines theoretical rigor with practical insights, providing an innovative framework for researchers, evaluators, managers, and practitioners.

Corporate Liability for Insider Trading examines the reasons why there have been no successful criminal prosecutions, or successful contested civil proceedings, against corporations for insider trading, and analyses the various rationales for prohibiting insider trading. It reviews the insider trading regulatory regime and describes its key features, using both national and international examples. The book inspects a variety of criminal and civil models of corporate liability and considers the historical and theoretical basis on which corporations are subject to insider trading laws. The specific elements of the insider trading offence and the manner in which they are attributed to corporations are analysed in detail. Defences available to corporations such as Chinese Walls are explored, and the obligations that are imposed on businesses as a result of insider trading regulation - security trading policies and notifications, continuous disclosure obligations, and duties concerning conflicts of interest - are detailed and examined. The book concludes with reform proposals intended to remedy the many legal and commercial difficulties identified, in order that a new regulatory regime might be adopted to better serve regulators, businesses, investors, and the broader market. This volume addresses these corporate law topics and will be of interest to researchers, academics, financial institution compliance officers, investment bankers, corporate and comparative lawyers, and students and scholars in the fields of commercial law, corporate law, financial crime, company law, and white collar crime

This book tells the story of how the convergence between corporate sustainability and sustainable investing is now becoming a major force driving systemic market changes. The idea and practice of corporate sustainability is no longer a niche movement. Investors are increasingly paying attention to sustainability factors in their analysis and decision-making, thus reinforcing market transformation. In this book, high-level practitioners and academic thought leaders, including contributions from John Ruggie, Fiona Reynolds, Johan Rockstroem, and Paul Polman, explain the forces behind these developments. The contributors highlight (a) that systemic market change is influenced by various contextual factors that impact how sustainable investing is perceived and practiced; (b) that the integration of ESG factors in investment decisions is impacting markets on a large scale and hence changes practices of major market players (e.g. pension funds); and (c) that technology and the increasing datafication of sustainability act as further accelerators of such change. The book goes beyond standard economic theory approaches to sustainable investing and emphasizes that capitalism founded on more real-world (complex) economics and cooperation can strengthen ESG integration. Aimed at both investment professionals and academics, this book gives the reader access to more practitioner-relevant information and it also discusses implementation issues. The reader will gain insights into how "mainstream" financial actors relate to sustainable investing.

There has been an increasing interest in financial markets across sociology, history, anthropology, cultural studies, and related disciplines over the past decades, with particular intensity since the 2007-2008 crisis which prompted new analyses of the workings of financial markets and how "scandals of Wall Street" might have huge societal ramifications. The sociologically inclined landscape of finance studies is characterized by different more or less well- established homogeneous camps, with more micro-empirical, social studies of finance approaches on the one end of the spectrum and more theoretical, often neo-Marxist approaches, on the other. Yet alternative approaches are also gaining traction, including work that emphasizes the cultural homologies and interconnections with finance as well as work that, more broadly, is both empirically rigorous and theoretically ambitious. Importantly, across these various approaches to finance, a growing body of literature is taking shape which engages finance in a critical manner. The term "critical finance studies" nonetheless remains largely unfocused and undefined. Against this backdrop, the key rationales of The Routledge Handbook of Critical Finance Studies are firstly to provide a coherent notion of this emergent field and secondly to demonstrate its analytical usefulness across a wide range of central aspects of contemporary finance. As such, the volume will offer a comprehensive guide to students and academics on the field of Finance and Critical Finance Studies, Heterodox Economics, Accounting, and related Management disciplines. Chapter 14 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license at https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138079816_oachapter14.pdf

Explaining the underlying logic behind financial ratios, this book adds to the discussion on the importance and implementation of ratios and illustrates the essential role that they play in company evaluations and investment screening. The author explores how ratios establish a proportional relationship between accounting and market data, and when well-integrated into a global company vision, can become powerful indicators capable of outlining relevant information and identifying warning signs. Going beyond merely listing possible ratios and looking further into their implementation, each ratio family is demonstrated with numerous graphs and practical case studies involving companies such as Amazon, Walmart and Alibaba. With a focus on behavioral finance and enterprise value, this innovative Palgrave Pivot will be of interest to investors, bankers and entrepreneurs, as well as finance scholars and students.

Valuation is the natural starting point toward buying or selling a business or securities through the stock market. Essential in wealth management, the valuation process allows the measurement of the strengths and weaknesses of a company and provides a historical reference for its development. This guide on valuation methods focuses on three global approaches: the assetbased approach, the fundamental or DCF approach, and the market approach. Ultimately, this book provides the basics needed to estimate the value of a small business. Many pedagogical cases and illustrations underpin its pragmatic and didactic content. However, it also contains enough theories to satisfy an expert audience. This book is ideal for business owners and additional players in the business world, legal professionals, accountants, wealth management advisers, and bankers, while also of interest to business school students and investors.

In a context of growing social and environmental concerns, the role of large enterprises and corporations in encouraging sustainability has drawn increasing attention in recent years. Both academic debates and public-opinion research have called into question the extended responsibilities of firms in our increasingly inter-connected world. By studying issues associated with the greatest challenges mankind is currently facing - from climate change to social exclusion - the scientific community is aware of the need to account for the actions and agendas of companies, especially large ones. They are becoming important global political actors with great power, but also unprecedented responsibilities. With this in mind, the authors believe that it is more important than ever that large enterprises, on the one hand, take into account the opinion of their stakeholder while defining their strategies and, on the other hand, disclose material and relevant information on their ability to contribute to sustainability while delivering value for all of their stakeholders. A consensus is being reached on the responsibility of large enterprises to report in a triple bottom perspective - not only on their financial performances, but also on their social and environmental outcomes. Consequently, it is important to understand what elements organizations need to report on in order to provide stakeholders with relevant and comprehensive sustainability reports. Against this background, this book presents a significant and original contribution, both empirically and theoretically, to the social and environmental accounting literature by studying the various features of stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting.

Scholars and practitioners have known for a long time that risk plays an important, indeed central, role in determining the appropriate discount rate to be used in a sophisticated valuation model. In today's world, however, the very risk of survival, especially for financial institutions, is essential to the health of the world's capital markets and their impact on the global economy.Risk, Value and Default is a vital text for understanding the interaction between enterprise risk management with corporate valuation and corporate default. The book seeks to explore the interaction between the risk of default and enterprise risk, and their joint impact on firm valuation. It aims to address the problem of how corporations should deal with risk and how they can maximize shareholder value. It also examines various conceptual ways to measure risk, thereby bridging the gap between theoretical concepts and pragmatic application.The book combines sound conceptual analytics and empirical tools to provide useful information and tangible guidelines for firms, risk managers and financial analysts and advisors. Scholars and professionals with an interest in risk management, and managers, owners, creditors and potential investors in enterprises will find Risk, Value and Default a particularly useful guide to understanding the relationship between risk generation, risk management and corporate value and default from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Financial reporting is a strategic means of communication: management has an opportunity to interpret, and the power to deliver, what is materially important to the organization's stakeholders. Understanding materiality means steering the company in the right direction, and many internal management battles regarding what and how to disclose in external financial reporting run on the verge of materiality. This book offers an integrated perspective of materiality from the angles of accounting (IFRS, US GAAP and SEC Rules and Regulations), auditing, internal control over financial reporting, management commentary, financial analysis, management control, forensic analysis, sustainability reporting, corporate responsibility, assurance standards, integrated reporting, and limited legal considerations. In Materiality in Financial Reporting: An Integrative Perspective, the author adopts a practical, operational approach to show how strategy, processes, and communication can be used to devise a consistent corporate governance system of materiality.