Raghavendra Rau is the Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Professor of Finance at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. He is a director of the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, past president of the European Finance Association, and past editor of the journal Financial Management. Professor Rau was Principal at Barclays Global Investors, then the largest asset manager in the world, from 2008-9. His research has frequently been covered by the popular press including the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist, among others.

• Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Who are the players in corporate finance?; 2. NPV and the investment decision of the firm; 3. Portfolio theory and the discount rate; 4. Capital structure theory; 5. Option pricing theory; 6. Asymmetric information; 7. Market efficiency; 8. Wrapping it up; Index.

'Raghavendra Rau has written a witty and thoroughly accessible introduction to how financial markets work and why they may fail to deliver. Highly recommended.' Sanjeev Goyal FBA, Fellow at Christ's College, University of Cambridge