Creating Shareholder Value: A Guide for Managers and Investors

Should a company's management be most accountable to employees, customers, or management itself? In Creating Shareholder Value, Alfred Rappaport argues that management's primary responsibility is to company shareholders. First published 12 years ago, the ideas put forth by Rappaport have since become commonplace in companies around the world.

Rappaport eschews the most common measures of a company's performance, such as price-to-earnings ratios ("Cash is a fact, profit is an opinion"), return on investment, and equity measures, instead concentrating on developing a shareholder value approach that measures "value drivers" such as sales-growth rates, operating profit margins, and cost of capital. This revised and updated edition addresses the issues of corporate downsizing and the social responsibilities of business. It also includes new sections on the value of mergers and acquisitions and how to implement a shareholder value system. Both managers and investors alike will find this book useful.