A History of Corporate FinanceThis study focuses on the role of institutions and organizations in the development of corporate finance from the Italian merchant banks of the Renaissance through the formation of conglomerates and leveraged-buy-out partnerships in contemporary Wall Street. It also puts forth a compelling argument for the closer integration of historical and quantitative research methodologies in financial theory. The epilogue contains an original algorithm that explains the relationship between the short-term, firm-specific factors and longer-term environmental elements that have shaped the historical development of finance. |
Contents
Medieval and Renaissance Origins | 29 |
Corporate Finance in the Age of Global Exploration Trading Companies and Oceanic Discovery 14501720 | 55 |
The Emergence of Public Markets for Investment Securities 16881815 | 89 |
THE RISE OF MODERN INDUSTRY | 125 |
Finance in the Age of Canals and Railroads 17751900 | 127 |
Common Stock Finance and the Rise of Managerial Capitalism 19001940 | 167 |
THE TRANSITION TO THE CONTEMPORARY ERA | 211 |
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Common terms and phrases
accounting achieve activities addition American assets Bank Bank of England bonds Britain British Bruges Cambridge capital cash center firms century chapt commercial common stock Company's competition conglomerates contracts corporate finance costs debt diversified dividend earnings East India Company economic economies of scale effective efficiency England enhanced enterprises entities equity established federal financial markets financial reporting Financial Revolution funds History Ibid idem income increased industrial informational asymmetry innovation institutions interest investment investors issues Joint-Stock Companies junk bond Kindleberger liquidity loans London managerial manufacturing Medici Bank ment merchants Mergers million Moreover nomic operations organizations ownership partnerships passim payments percent period political portfolios potential preferred stock problem profits railroad reduced reforms Regulation risk scale and scope securities shareholders shares South Sea Bubble South Sea Company structure theory tion trade United University Press York
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Page 1 - Of these fundamental fields, economic history - which issues into and includes present-day facts - is by far the most important. I wish to state right now that if, starting my work in economics afresh, I were told that I could study only one of these three but could have my choice, it would be economic history that I should choose.
Page 2 - Second, the historical report cannot be purely economic but must inevitably reflect also ,institutional' facts that are not purely economic: therefore it affords the best method for understanding how economic and non-economic facts are related to one another and how the various social sciences should be related to one another. Third, it is, I believe, the fact that most of the fundamental errors currently committed in economic analysis are due to lack of historical experience more often than to any...
Page 2 - Nobody can hope to understand the economic phenomena of any, including the present, epoch who has not an adequate command of historical facts and an adequate amount of historical sense or of what may be described as historical experience. Second, the historical report cannot be purely economic but must inevitably reflect also 'institutional...
Page 8 - I venture the judgment that currently in the Western world, and especially in the United States, differences about economic policy among disinterested citizens derive predominantly from different predictions about the consequences of taking action, differences that can in principle be eliminated by the progress of positive economics — rather than from fundamental differences in basic values, differences about which men can ultimately only fight.
Page 13 - Herbert A. Simon: Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization, 2nd ed.