Financial analysis

Current accounting rules don’t always communicate real value to investors.

How CEOs can change the conversation.

Be an expert, not a friend.

Digital financial companies are making big claims about financial inclusion - but are failing to disclose data that backs up their efforts.

It pays to be conscientious. Extroverted, not so much.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues have traditionally been of secondary concern to investors. But in recent years, institutional investors...

Get value from your data with AI, not more PhDs.

Accurate and rapid analysis of the risks and future benefits of an acquisition is necessary in today's market. The planning of corporate strategy with...

Collecting lots of data is not the hard part.

Entrepreneurs draw up business plans for new ventures to make various marketing, pricing, financial, and other projections. More often than not, though, their estimates bear little relationship to reality. These authors argue that planning for new enterprises differs fundamentally from planning for existing companies, given the inherent instability of start-ups. How can managers launching new […]

Take a portfolio approach.

When companies buy computers for their employees, they also provide training to make sure the investment pays off. So why do those same companies invest millions of dollars in health care without making any particular effort to ensure that their employees stay healthy? As major purchasers of health care, corporations have almost as much of […]

This is a challenging time to be a CEO. Around the world, economic growth is slow, political uncertainty undermines attempts to develop long-term plans,...

Map out your options and your competitors’ before making big-ticket investments.

And investors aren't always enthusiastic about it.

A new measure gets past the distortions of total shareholder return and puts buybacks into perspective.

Do you know what your most profitable product is?

Managers fail to communicate effectively with Wall Street for all sorts of reasons. But neglecting the investment community--particularly the analysts...

A company’s stock price is the clearest measure of market expectations about its performance. Yet in a 1984 Louis Harris poll of top executives from more than 600 companies, fewer than one-third thought the market fairly valued their company’s stock. Tellingly, only 2% thought their stock was overvalued, while a dramatic 60% said the market […]

It would do less than both its proponents and its opponents suggest.