Corporate Finance Third Canadian Edition 3rd by Jonathan Berk
ISBN-13: 9780133055290
ISBN-10: 0133055299
With a consistency in presentation and an innovative set of learning aids, Corporate Finance, Third Canadian Edition, simultaneously meets the needs of both future financial managers and non-financial managers. This textbook truly shows every student how to ?think finance.?
The first Canadian edition was written just as the financial crisis of 2008?2009 was unfolding.
One thing that was reinforced by the financial crisis and the continuing crises that
followed is the need to understand finance so that correct decision making is done. As we
said in the first edition, understanding finance is important and is the purpose of this book:
In our over 50 years of combined teaching experience, we have found that leaving out core
material deemed ?too hard? actually makes the subject matter less accessible. The core concepts in
finance are simple and intuitive. What makes the subject challenging is that it is often difficult
for a novice to distinguish between these core ideas and other intuitively appealing approaches
that, if used in financial decision making, will lead to incorrect decisions. De-emphasizing the
core concepts that underlie finance strips students of the essential intellectual tools they need to differentiate
between good and bad decision making. Therefore, our primary motivation for writing
this book was to equip students with a solid grounding in the core financial concepts and tools
needed to make good decisions.
There is little doubt that one of the most important contributing factors to the financial
crisis was that many practitioners who should have known better did not understand, or
chose to ignore, the core concepts that underlie finance in general (and the pedagogy in this
book in particular), leading them to make many very bad decisions.
We present corporate finance as an application of a set of simple, powerful ideas. At the
heart is the principal of the absence of arbitrage opportunities, or Law of One Price: In life,
you don?t get something for nothing. This simple concept is a powerful and important tool
in financial decision making. By relying on it, and the other core principles in this book,
financial decision makers can avoid the bad decisions brought to light by the financial crisis.
We use the Law of One Price as a compass; it keeps financial decision makers on the right
track and is the backbone of the entire book.
