Strategic Corporate Finance: Applications in Valuation & Capital Structure.

Strategic Corporate Finance: Applications in Valuation & Capital Structure. By Justin Pettit. Wiley, 284 pages. $90.

If you do indeed get what you pay for, what you get for $90 here is a lot of detailed and specific thinking about corporate finance. Author Justin Pettit, a partner at Booz Allen Hamilton with a long background in corporate financial advisory work, has fashioned a longish and complex book, albeit with a carefully thought-out structure, that begs for careful reading.

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Pettit has divided the book into three basic sections: the first addresses the left-hand side of the balance sheet; the second, the right-hand side; and a third examines optimal enterprise-wide perspectives on capital management. This third part also addresses best practices in financial hedging.

Studded with charts and graphs and an occasional equation, Strategic Corporate Finance includes detailed case studies and a wealth of advice about raising, allocating and managing capital, as well as dealing with the attendant risks. It's a textbook in everything but name, and should be a highly useful read for CFOs and others wrestling with complicated issues like capital structure and maximizing shareholder value.