Principles of Corporate Finance

...This book runneth over with usefulness! Every student of applied corporate finance should own this volume. This book has reared its informative head during numerous periods in my journey towards understanding financial theory effectively --from the States to industry to the hallowed halls of several European universities and beyond... Parents: buy this book for your fledgling exotic derivatives trader or your future Wharton professor!

The new edition of Brealey & Myers's classic introductory text on corporate finance is still the best. This is the book used by top universities and business schools for a first course on capital markets and corporate finance. The strengths of the book are: breadth (see the table of contents for the large number of topics covered), practicality (you learn the theory and also how to apply theory in practice), and clarity (very easy to follow). The student does not need prior knowledge to understand the materials.When I worked on Wall Street all my colleagues had a copy of Brealey and Myers. The new edition updates the text (I have not found any major changes). A must-have for those interested in the basics of corporate finance. Also a good refresher for seasoned professionals (but you already knew that!).

Wow. People love or hate this book. I love this book but I can where some people might object. Why I love it: It is well written, it has many examples, it covers many subjects, it has a sense of humor (many reviewers do not have a sense of humor) and I found myself referencing this book as I took subsequent quantitative-oriented classes in my MBA program.Why some people may hate it: 1. European MBA programs are much more quantitatively oriented. The MBAs from Belgium and London tell me that 50% of their grade in most classes requires proving or deriving a formula. This book won't tell you how to do that or address those hairy mathmatical models. 2. Finance practitioners, options traders, investment bankers aren't wild about this book. It is not in-depth quantitative in its nature. I don't believe practitioners should be reading a general book such as this. If they are reading this book, then this should be only one of several works they should be reading. 3. Finance is hard work! Most of my MBA peers were blindsided by the amount of effort required by the class (as I was). Even the Sr. financial analysts in my class were challenged by the work. If you're not sharp on your math skills, your finance class will make you choke! Any book that would purport to tell you everything you need to know for a basic corp. finance class would be a multivolume set! Don't demand miracles from one textbook!Do yourself a favor: If you do use this book or subsequent volumes, purchase the study guide and solutions guide as well! And attend teaching assistant sessions if you can!About CAPM, APT and WACC: they are addressed in this book. Maybe not to the extent that they should be, but then again, this book is a survey of issues. My prof spent lots of time on those subjects even though the book did not.

I first came across the second edition of this book while I was an MBA student in the mid-1980s. At that time, I thought that this book was superb. Since that time, I have gone on to get a Ph.D. in Finance and currently teach MBA students and have taught advanced undergraduate students. I have consistently chosen to use this textbook simply because it's the best textbook in corporate finance that money can buy. Brealey and Myers raised the bar phenomenally when they published the first edition of their book. Every time they come out with a new edition they update the contents with the new research that's published (they exercize great wisdom in judging what new research is important--the finance community can thank them for that). The pedagogy is excellent, the exercizes are great, the examples are relevant, and, despite what some of the other reviewers have stated, the humor is good (heck, this is the only corporate finance textbook that even has humor in it). What about the customer reviews that have trashed this book? Based on my number of years of teaching experience, I have found that some students have a difficult time with this book. I also find that these students are ill-prepared to take a course in corporate finance and don't have an understanding of basic statistics or accounting or economics. So if you are ill-prepared for a rigorous course in corporate finance, this book is not for you. As for the reviewer who claims that the CAPM and arbitrage pricing theory are missing....that's simply a false statement.Bottom line: This is a fantastic book and it is used as a textbook in core MBA finance courses at all the good universities like Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Wharton, etc.

Do not be too confused by comments of other reviewers. This book is definitely 'not' the bible for people having finance as a major. What the book presents, is an excellant introduction to understand the principles of corporate finance. And nothing more is claimed by the authors anyway. I have used the book during my first course in finance at one of the Top-3 American Business Schools. The book provided me with an excellant introduction over a variety of CF topics, though I have to admit that (having a Ph.D. in engineering) I missed the math part in it. So, do not look for proofs, etc., but just use it to get the bigger picture of what CF is about. If you are seriously interested in pursueing a carrier in CF, you will anyway come across other books with more mathematical depth. If it turns out that CF is nothing for you, you can still use the book as reference later on in your professional carrier, since it is easy to look up things without remembering heavy-math stuff.