Finance refers to monetary resources and to the study and discipline of money, currency, assets and liabilities. As a subject of study, it is related to but distinct from economics, which is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Based on the scope of financial activities in financial systems, the discipline can be divided into personal, corporate, and public finance.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is an international financial institution that offers investment, advisory, and asset-management services to encourage private-sector development in less developed countries. The IFC is a member of the World Bank Group and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States.
A businessperson, also referred to as a businessman or businesswoman, is an individual who has founded, owns, or holds shares in a private-sector company. A businessperson undertakes activities to generate cash flow, sales, and revenue by using a combination of human, financial, intellectual, and physical capital to fuel economic development and growth.
Corporate governance refers to the mechanisms, processes, practices, and relations by which corporations are controlled and operated by their boards of directors, managers, shareholders, and stakeholders.
The global financial system is the worldwide framework of legal agreements, institutions, and both formal and informal economic action that together facilitate international flows of financial capital for purposes of investment and trade financing. Since emerging in the late 19th century during the first modern wave of economic globalization, its evolution is marked by the establishment of central banks, multilateral treaties, and intergovernmental organizations aimed at improving the transparency, regulation, and effectiveness of international markets. In the late 1800s, world migration and communication technology facilitated unprecedented growth in international trade and investment. At the onset of World War I, trade contracted as foreign exchange markets became paralyzed by money market illiquidity. Countries sought to defend against external shocks with protectionist policies and trade virtually halted by 1933, worsening the effects of the global Great Depression until a series of reciprocal trade agreements slowly reduced tariffs worldwide. Efforts to revamp the international monetary system after World War II improved exchange rate stability, fostering record growth in global finance.
An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital the investor usually purchases some species of property. Types of investments include equity, debt, securities, real estate, infrastructure, currency, commodity, token, derivatives such as put and call options, futures, forwards, etc. This definition makes no distinction between the investors in the primary and secondary markets. That is, someone who provides a business with capital and someone who buys a stock are both investors. An investor who owns stock is a shareholder.
A financial analyst is a professional undertaking financial analysis for external or internal clients as a core feature of the job. The role may specifically be titled securities analyst, research analyst, equity analyst, investment analyst, or ratings analyst. The job title is a broad one: In banking, and industry more generally, various other analyst-roles cover financial management and (credit) risk management, as opposed to focusing on investments and valuation.
Shareholder value is a business term, sometimes phrased as shareholder value maximization. The term expresses the idea that the primary goal for a business is to increase the wealth of its shareholders (owners) by paying dividends and/or causing the company's stock price to increase. It became a prominent idea during the 1980s and 1990s, along with the management principle value-based management or managing for value.
Financial risk management is the practice of protecting economic value in a firm by managing exposure to financial risk - principally credit risk and market risk, with more specific variants as listed aside - as well as some aspects of operational risk. As for risk management more generally, financial risk management requires identifying the sources of risk, measuring these, and crafting plans to mitigate them. See Finance § Risk management for an overview.
The chief risk officer (CRO), chief risk management officer (CRMO), or chief risk and compliance officer (CRCO) of a firm or corporation is the executive accountable for enabling the efficient and effective governance of significant risks, and related opportunities, to a business and its various segments. Risks are commonly categorized as strategic, reputational, operational, financial, or compliance-related. CROs are accountable to the Executive Committee and The Board for enabling the business to balance risk and reward. In more complex organizations, they are generally responsible for coordinating the organization's Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) approach. The CRO is responsible for assessing and mitigating significant competitive, regulatory, and technological threats to a firm's capital and earnings. The CRO roles and responsibilities vary depending on the size of the organization and industry. The CRO works to ensure that the firm is compliant with government regulations, such as Sarbanes–Oxley, and reviews factors that could negatively affect investments. Typically, the CRO is responsible for the firm's risk management operations, including managing, identifying, evaluating, reporting and overseeing the firm's risks externally and internally to the organization and works diligently with senior management such as chief executive officer and chief financial officer.
Kroll is a financial and risk advisory firm established in 1932 and based in New York City. In 2018, Kroll was acquired by Duff & Phelps. In 2021, Duff & Phelps decided to rebrand itself as Kroll, a process it completed in 2022.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to finance:
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to business management:
Socially responsible investing (SRI) is any investment strategy which seeks to consider financial return alongside ethical, social or environmental goals. The areas of concern recognized by SRI practitioners are often linked to environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics. Impact investing can be considered a subset of SRI that is generally more proactive and focused on the conscious creation of social or environmental impact through investment. Eco-investing is SRI with a focus on environmentalism.
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk, and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones.
Risk intelligence is a concept that generally means "beyond risk management", though it has been used in different ways by different writers. The term is being used more frequently by business strategists when discussing integrative business processes related to governance, risk, and compliance.
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) is shorthand for an investing principle that prioritizes environmental issues, social issues, and corporate governance. Investing with ESG considerations is sometimes referred to as responsible investing or, in more proactive cases, impact investing.
Corporate finance is an area of finance that deals with the sources of funding, and the capital structure of businesses, the actions that managers take to increase the value of the firm to the shareholders, and the tools and analysis used to allocate financial resources. The primary goal of corporate finance is to maximize or increase shareholder value.
The Asia School of Business (ASB) is a graduate business school based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. ASB was established in 2015 through a partnership between the MIT Sloan School of Management and Bank Negara Malaysia, the Central Bank of Malaysia. It offers a range of programs, including a 12-month Master of Business Administration (MBA), a 16-month Executive MBA (EMBA), and a 12-month Master in Central Banking (MCB).
Alex Edmans is a British academic and economist who is professor of finance at London Business School and Mercers' School Memorial Emeritus Professor of Business at Gresham College. He serves on the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on the Future of Responsible Investing and as a non-executive director of the Investor Forum. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Social Sciences and the Financial Management Association, Director of the American Finance Association, and Vice President of the Western Finance Association.
