This paper addresses 10 corporate finance topics that are not well treated (or not treated at all) in many Corporate Finance Books. The topics are: 1. Where does the WACC equation come from? 2. The WACC is not a cost. 3. What is the WACC equation when the value of the debt is not equal to its...

The market risk premium is one of the most important but elusive parameters in finance. It is also called equity premium, market premium and risk premium. The term 'market risk premium' is difficult to understand because it is used to designate three different concepts: 1) Required market risk...

I review 100 finance and valuation textbooks published between 1979 and 2008 by authors such as Brealey and Myers, Copeland, Damodaran, Merton, Ross, Bruner, Bodie, Penman, Weston, Brigham and Arzac and find that their recommendations regarding the equity premium range from 3% to 10%. I also...

2003 was a good year for the shareholders of the companies in the Euro Stoxx 50: the shareholder value creation of these 50 companies was €150,016 million. The companies that created most value for their shareholder were Siemens (€18,778 million), Telefonica (15,382) and BSCH (12,443). The...

2004 was a good year for the shareholders of the companies in the Euro Stoxx 50: the shareholder value creation of these 50 companies was €42,880 million. It was not as good as 2003, however, when their value creation reached slightly over €160,000 million. The companies that created most...

2002 was a bad year: the shareholder value destruction of the companies in the S&P 500 was $3.3 trillion. In 2002 only 16% of the companies created value (80 companies created value and 420 companies destroyed value). The percentage of value creators was 35%, 54%, 47% and 53% for 2001, 2000,...

During 2003, 87% of the companies in the S&P 500 created value, compared to just 17% in 2002. The market value of the 500 companies in 2003 was $10.1 trillion, compared to $7.9 trillion in 2002. The top shareholder value creators in 2003 were Intel, Cisco, Citigroup, General Electric and Exxon....

This paper is a review of the recommendations about the equity premium found in the main finance and valuation textbooks. We review several editions of books written by authors such as Brealey and Myers; Copeland, Koller and Murrin (McKinsey); Ross, Westerfield and Jaffe; Bodie, Kane and Marcus;...

In this paper, we quantify shareholder value creation for 276 American companies. We provide the created shareholder value for each and every company for years 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. The market value of the 276 companies was 8,716 billion dollars in 2001 and 9,729 billion dollars in 2000. We...

This paper is a review of the recommendations about the equity premium found in the main finance and valuation textbooks. We review several editions of books written by authors such as Brealey and Myers; Copeland, Koller and Murrin (McKinsey); Ross, Westerfield and Jaffe; Bodie, Kane and Marcus;...