Corporate Leadership

It was the most brutal corporate restructuring in Wall Street history. The 2015 bankruptcy brawl for the storied casino giant, Caesars Entertainment, pitted brilliant and ruthless private equity legends against the world's most relentless hedge fund wizards.

In The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital, the pioneers of the industry share the investing and management wisdom they have gained by investing in and transforming their portfolio companies. Based on original interviews conducted by the authors, this book is filled with colorful stories on the subjects that most matter to the high-level investor, such as selecting and working with management, pioneering new markets, adding value through operational improvements, applying private equity principles to non-profits, and much more.

Emphasizing greater clarity on risk practice, this new edition maintains a focus on the ability to apply "planned clairvoyance" to peer into the future. The book begins by analyzing the various systems that can be used to apply risk management. It provides a fundamental introduction to the basics associated with particular techniques, clarifying the essential concepts of risk and how they apply in projects. The second part of the book presents the specific techniques necessary to successfully implement the systems described in Part I.

A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world.

Corporate Turnaround Artistry is a complete guide for entrepreneurial companies in times of financial distress - presenting effective strategies and proven methods to revive and rehabilitate your business. Uncertain economic times have significantly altered the financial resources available to struggling businesses. Narrowing margins and mounting internal and external pressure has taken their toll on many companies. Fortunately, most businesses can be repaired while maintaining their existing revenue structure.

Created for risk professionals and non-risk professionals alike, this easy-to-understand guide helps you meet the increasingly insistent demand to make sophisticated assessments of companies' risk exposure. It provides the latest methods for measuring and transferring credit risk, increasing risk-management transparency, and implementing an organization-wide Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) approach.

Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart shows for the first time how four of the biggest names on Wall Street - Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine - created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions - until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America's most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice.

Throughout his storied career, Aswath Damodaran has searched for the universal key to demystify corporate finance and valuation. Now, at last, he offers the groundbreaking answer to listeners everywhere. As the corporate lifecycle touches virtually every aspect of business, this book is for anyone with skin in the corporate finance game—from managers to investors, from novices to seasoned pros. Aswath Damodaran’s The Corporate Life Cycle is the definitive guide to understanding businesses growth, behavior, and value.

Since its release in 2006, Financial Intelligence has become a favorite among managers who need a guided tour through the numbers, helping them to understand not only what the numbers really mean but also why they matter. This new, completely updated edition brings the numbers up to date and continues to teach the basics of finance to managers who need to use financial data to drive their business.

The Failure of Risk Management provides effective solutions to significant faults in current risk analysis methods. Conventional approaches to managing risk lack accurate quantitative analysis methods, yielding strategies that can actually make things worse. Many widely used methods have no systems to measure performance, resulting in inaccurate selection and ineffective application of risk management strategies. These fundamental flaws propagate unrealistic perceptions of risk in business, government, and the general public.

The inspiring, unlikely, laugh-out-loud story of how one woman learned to lead - and how she ultimately succeeded, not despite her many mistakes, but because of them. This is the story of how Kristen Hadeed built Student Maid, a cleaning company where people are happy, loyal, productive, and empowered, even while they're mopping floors and scrubbing toilets.

In today's tumultuous business environment, managers want guidance in the form of a timely theme, a unique and memorable metaphor, and outside-the-box thinking. That's precisely what Corporate Canaries delivers. The book features five core chapters revealing five common business hazards, and each lesson is accompanied by a story based on the author's grandfather's work in the coal industry, as well as an applicable "canary warning" for each theme.

We live in digital time. Our pace is rushed, rapid-fire, and relentless. Facing crushing workloads, we try to cram as much as possible into every day. We're wired up, but we're melting down. Time management is no longer a viable solution. Managing energy, not time, is the key to enduring high performance as well as to health, happiness, and life balance. The Power of Full Engagement provides a powerful, step-by-step program that will show you how.

More than 10,000 mergers and acquisitions occur annually in the US, many among small and mid-sized companies. These complex transactions can be an effective growth strategy, but they carry significant risk. Mergers and Acquisitions from A to Z helps guard against costly mistakes. Expert advice, case studies, checklists, and sample documents walk you through every step of the process - from valuation to securities laws to closing and successful integration.

It's the ultimate road trip. Legendary investor Jim Rogers and his fiancee travel to 116 countries in a custom-built, four-wheel-drive, bright yellow Mercedes. Over three years, they make their way through war zones, are guarded by military convoys, observe a 50-million-person pilgrimage, eat disgusting food, put the car on barges for transport between countries, and have their lives threatened at every turn.

Corporate boards are under great pressure. Scandals and malpractice at companies like Theranos, WeWork, Uber, and Wells Fargo have raised justified questions among regulators, shareholders, and the public about the quality of corporate governance. In How Boards Work, prizewinning economist and veteran board director Dambisa Moyo offers an insider's view of corporate boards as they are buffeted by the turbulence of our times.

Competition is moving beyond industry to ecosystem. Are you ready? In the shift from pipeline to platform, value is no longer created by your company's product or process alone - it's created through interactions. And the strategy you used to become an industry leader won't help you compete in an evolving and complex ecosystem. If you listen to nothing else on platforms and ecosystems, listen to these 10 articles by experts in the field.

A pioneer of economics and political science in India, Chanakya was one of the most brilliant, tactful and shrewd economists and strategists of the Mauryan Era. Building the entire Mauryan Empire can be attributed to Chanakya's witty principles and out-of-the-box strategies. The modern-day world is a witness to innumerable business empires that need effective management to remain at par with growing competition. The author makes use of the aphorisms or sutras proposed in Chanakya's book called Arthasastra (Economics) in the management and functioning of modern-day businesses.

Balancing the short term and the long term is a perennial struggle, but new developments put boards squarely at the center of this dilemma and in need of guidance. Much of the $14 trillion of assets that firms like Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street manage is now held in index funds, creating a huge class of permanent institutional investors. These so-called passive investors (unlike activist investors, passive investors don't have power to exit the fund) own almost 60 percent of the Fortune 500 - and they have found their voice.

Do you know the best way to drive your company's growth? If not, it's time to boost your growth IQ. Trying to find the one right move that will improve your business's performance can feel overwhelming. But, as you'll discover in Growth IQ, there are just 10 simple - but easily misunderstood - paths to growth, and every successful growth strategy can be boiled down to picking the right combination and sequence of these paths for your current context.