Curriculum How Companies Work: Corporate Finance Basics
How Companies Work: Corporate Finance Basics
Reading a company's accounts, how firms raise and spend money, what a business is worth, and what happens when things go wrong.
- Reading an Income Statement How a company's income statement moves from sales at the top to profit at the bottom, and what each line tells you. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Balance Sheet: What a Company Owns and Owes How a balance sheet lists a company's assets, liabilities and shareholders' equity at a single moment, and why the two sides always balance. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Cash Flow Statement: Following the Money How the cash flow statement tracks real cash coming in and going out, and why profitable companies can still run out of money. 📄 Read-aloud
- Debt vs Equity: How Companies Raise Money The two main ways companies fund themselves, the trade-offs between borrowing and selling ownership, and how leverage magnifies gains and losses. 📄 Read-aloud
- What Is a Company Worth? The main ways analysts value a business, from discounting future cash flows to comparing price-to-earnings ratios, and why valuations are uncertain. 📄 Read-aloud
- Dividends and Share Buybacks The two main ways companies return cash to shareholders, how they differ, and why buybacks are debated. 📄 Read-aloud
- How Companies Work: Checkpoint 1 Quick checkpoint - five questions on financial statements, financing, valuation and returning cash to shareholders. 5 questions
- Mergers and Acquisitions: Why Companies Buy Each Other The reasons companies combine, why many acquisitions disappoint, and how competition authorities review big deals. 📄 Read-aloud
- Who Controls a Company? Boards and Shareholders How corporate governance balances power between shareholders, the board of directors and managers, and why it matters. 📄 Read-aloud
- Going Public: How IPOs Work How a private company sells shares to the public for the first time, why companies do it, and what it costs. 📄 Read-aloud
- When Companies Fail: Bankruptcy and Restructuring What happens when a company cannot pay its debts, the difference between restructuring and liquidation, and how India reformed its insolvency system. 📄 Read-aloud
- Working Capital: Inventory, Customers and Suppliers How the money tied up in stock, unpaid customer bills and supplier credit affects a company's cash, and how businesses manage it. 📄 Read-aloud
- When the Numbers Lie: Accounting Scandals What famous accounting frauds at Enron, Satyam and Wirecard reveal about how companies can mislead, and the safeguards meant to catch them. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Cost of Capital and Hurdle Rates How companies decide whether an investment is worth making by comparing its expected return with the cost of the money used to fund it. 📄 Read-aloud