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A Refresher on Cost of Capital

Harvard Business Review

You’ll likely be asked to show that the return on the investment will be better than your company’s cost of capital. What is the cost of capital? “At most companies, the cost of capital is a mechanical calculation done by the finance people. But are you sure you know exactly what that is?

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The Three Decisions You Need to Own

Harvard Business Review

At many companies the total cash investment in acquisitions, R&D, and fixed assets has not earned back its cost of capital after adjusting for the time lag in realizing incremental benefits. It was the first time a vice chair would be based in an emerging market.

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Why Sit on All that Cash? Firms Uncertain on Cost of Capital

Harvard Business Review

Many are deeply uncertain about which initiatives they should fund — and one root of this indecision is a general lack of confidence in the cost of capital projections they are using to make the call. We find that 55 percent of respondents are convinced their cost of capital estimates are off by more than 50 basis points.

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Why Those Guys Won the Economics Nobels

Harvard Business Review

Back in the ‘60s, people developed the capital asset pricing model [CAPM] as a way to do that. You’d have this beta with the market, so you have the riskless rate plus beta times the equity premium. It’s not something that necessarily resonates a lot with people in the markets or people in the world.

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Is Your Business Biased Against Innovation?

Strategy Driven

The logic of NPV is to project cash flows into the future and then discount those flows back into today’s dollars at a given cost of capital. With Discovery-Driven Growth , Rita and Ian offer managers everywhere a time-tested blueprint for planning and executing a strategic growth agenda with confidence – in any market.

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How Blockchain Is Changing Finance

Harvard Business Review

Money, equities, bonds, titles, deeds, contracts, and virtually all other kinds of assets can be moved and stored securely, privately, and from peer to peer, because trust is established not by powerful intermediaries like banks and governments, but by network consensus, cryptography, collaboration, and clever code.