Welcome to the second module of Corporate Financial Decision-Making for Value Creation, where we start to delve deeper into the question - how do CFOs actually make those decisions they do? So in the first module, we dealt with the project evaluation problem with by its very nature has an internal focus, which mostly involves the process by which internally generated investment proposals are assessed against the objective benchmarks, such as MPV, IRR and the payback period. As you can see, the rest of this course we'll shift our focus to how the firm interacts with the broader marketplace. In this, the second module, we'll consider how the firm approaches its decision to finance its assets. And ultimately, how it provides returns to shareholders. This external focus will continue as we shift into the next module to the broader issue of external investment via mergers and acquisitions, as well as the related issue of divestment in external markets through corporate restructuring. The final module in this course then, considers the external instruments that are available to firms to enable them to manage their own risk, but let's not get in front of ourselves. The focus today is squarely on raising capital and distributing profits. Specifically, we're going to run through the nuts and bolts of a firm's decision to float on a public exchange. We'll then shift our attention to the widespread problem of trying to set a price for an asset, a share that has never been traded. The third session then considers in-depth the impact of introducing debt on the returns to shareholders and of the firm, which lead naturally into a discussion of how firms ultimately choose between debt and equity. We conclude this module by canvassing the issues raised when firms confront the question, what proportion of earnings should be returned to shareholders and what proportion should be retained within the firm? Now this promises to be an action packed module, so get yourself comfortable -not too comfortable- and let's get started!