Contributions to Finance and Accounting

The book is divided into two sections. The first part presents case studies that cover several industry sectors, including not only well-known frauds like Bernie Madoff, Wells Fargo and the Enron case, but also recent events such as the Theranos/Elisabeth Holmes case.

The second section of the book includes materials on fraud and corruption such as the full text of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business, and the EIB’s Anti-Fraud Policy and Whistleblowing Policy. It also includes examples about current corporate anti-corruption policies from companies like Apple, Tesla and Coca Cola. For interested readers, the book offers additionally a list of films that realistically cover the topics fraud, corruption and whistleblowing.

This book on entrepreneurial fundraising combines rigor and applicability to train current and prospective entrepreneurs in the financing processes. Through its diverse set of chapters, it reviews the latest financing tools and dynamics, the most pressing dilemmas as well as practical examples of ideal methods in the economic-financial management of startups. This book analyzes the financing methods available to entrepreneurs from a practical perspective. Expert authors also present insights on topics such as the role of incubators and accelerators in entrepreneurial fundraising; crowd-based entrepreneurial fundraising instruments; factoring, leasing and confirming for entrepreneurs; government grants, subsidies, and tax reliefs; business angels and venture capital firms; access to capital markets through initial public offerings; and financing with crypto-assets. The book concludes with a discussion on emerging issues in the entrepreneurial finance paradigm, namely transparency and legitimacy and corporate governance in startups; and, additionally, provides a practical toolkit for fundraising, with the main mistakes, how to win over investors, success stories, and resounding failures. 

This book addresses the most widespread forms of financial crime today, namely corporate fraud, corruption, tax fraud, the shadow economy, informal entrepreneurship, money laundering, international informal capital flows, cybercrimes, and cryptocurrency scams. Given the rapid rise of digitalization, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a huge surge in financial crime, especially in the form of cybercrime, which affects people’s financial security. Hence, the aim of this book is to stress the connected nature of financial crime and good governance, in order to achieve the most positive, sustainable development of society.

Banks play a crucial role in the global economy, yet they are vulnerable to failures that can have catastrophic effects. Key questions arise: What causes bank failures? What drives these failures? Can we avoid a banking crisis? What happens when a bank fails?

This book explores the causes, consequences, and potential prevention of banking crises. It begins by examining the fundamental roles of banks in the economic system, focusing on their intermediary functions like liquidity provision, payment management, asset transformation, and borrower oversight. The book then delves into the challenges facing the banking sector, including cyber threats, climate change, and geopolitical instabilities.

The second chapter addresses the primary risks banks face, such as liquidity, credit, market, interest rate, IT, and environmental risks, and how these contribute to banking failures. Chapter three shifts focus to financial statements, contrasting those of commercial and investment banks with non-financial companies, and discusses the impact of creative accounting in recent banking collapses.

Governance issues and their role in banking failures are the focus of chapter four, highlighting the crucial need for effective risk monitoring by bank directors. The final chapter illustrates the process of bank resolution and the evolving strategies of resolution authorities in ensuring bank stability.

Targeted at researchers, regulators, and practitioners, this book comprehensively covers the drivers of banking failures, regulatory improvement suggestions, and real-world case studies. It emphasizes the importance of banks in today’s economy, their unique risks, and the aftermath of their failure, aiming to provide a threefold contribution to understanding and managing banking crises.

This book presents case studies on financial crime, focusing on money laundering and terrorism finance. It includes real life examples to identify the characteristics of these crimes and discusses possible national and international measures to prevent it.

The book is divided into three sections. The first part of the book reviews international and national approaches and responses to the problems. The second part includes case summaries involving money laundering, terrorist financing or economic crime involving cryptocurrency in a range of countries. The third part of the book focuses on legal frameworks to prevent money laundering, terrorist financing and misuse of virtual assets and includes materials from the UN, OECD, FATF, MDB and EU policies to address these issues.

This book sheds new light on the most important contemporary and emerging startup valuation topics. Drawing on the first-hand professional experience of practitioners, professionals, and startup experts from various fields of finance, combined with a sound academic foundation, it offers a practical guide to startup valuation and presents applications, practical examples, and case studies of real startup ecosystems.

The book discusses pressing questions, such as: Why are startups in California are higher valued than those in New York? Or why do startups based in London receive higher valuations than those in Paris, Berlin, or Milan, even when they are based in similarly-sized economies, share the same industries, and often even have the same investors? Answering these questions, the authors present key topics, such as hierarchical and segmented approaches to startup valuation, business plans, and sensitivity analysis, many methods such as venture capital valuation, first Chicago valuation, scorecard valuation, Dave Berkus valuation, risk factor summation valuation, and discounted cash flow valuation, in addition to business valuation by data envelopment analysis and real options analysis, as well as critical conceptual issues in the valuation such as expected returns of the venture capital and price versus value concepts, among others.