Book excerpt: This book covers the fundamentals of financial management and investment management without getting into the highly technical topics and mathematical rigor. It also provides a practitioner-oriented approach to financial and investment management.The field of finance covers several specialty areas. The two most important ones which set the foundations for the other specialty areas are financial management and investment management, and these are the two major topics covered in the book. After touching on the basics — the financial system and the players, financial statements, and mathematics of finance — the authors then cover financial management and investment management in greater depth. For financial management the authors focus on financial strategy and financial planning, dividend policy, corporate financing decisions, entrepreneurial finance, financial risk management, and capital budgeting decisions. The investment management coverage includes the different types of risks faced in investing, company analysis, valuing common stock, portfolio selection, asset pricing theory, and investing in common stocks and bonds. The last chapter of the book covers financial derivatives and how they are used in finance to control risk.