This course covers financial decision making inside non-financial firms. While we will always have to consider the perspective of financial markets and financial institutions as "constraints" for our decisions, and while financial markets provide some of the data we require (for example: the cost of debt and equity capital), the goal is to learn how to make optimal decisions from the perspective of non-financial firms. In this course, this also includes financial decisions inside small firms and even inside a non-profit firm. We take the perspective of various decision makers: not just the CFO, but also other executives including the CEO, COO, and divisional and functional heads. Since the decisions of functional managers (Marketing, HR, Operations, etc.) have to satisfy the financial goals and constraints of the firm, we will explicitly examine their decisions and their relationship to value maximization and financial risk management. We will also examine how firms can avoid “running out of money” while they grow and execute strategic plans.