This book addresses the complex issues of modern theory and practice in the field of financial diagnosis and business evaluation. Undoubtedly, most of the concepts and tools used in the analysis are not new to a savvy reader. What differentiates this work from others is the emphasis on the idea that the value of the company appears as a result of the business model, of the structure and exploitation processes, of the company's relations with the economic environment. We tried to substantiate an original conception regarding the value of the company. Our desire was to highlight the connection between diagnostic / evaluation tools and the objective of companies' recovery - the fundamental component of anti-crisis strategies. Based on this approach, we intend to identify the causal relationships that are formed between the efficiency of the company's operation and its value. The paradigmatic matrix in which our reasoning was inscribed is fed directly from the major objective of financial management, namely maximizing the market value of the business. This is because the mission of a business is to create economic value. The recovery of companies must be subordinated to this desideratum.
We hope that it will not be too difficult for readers to find favorite topics of analysis of efficiency, value and ways of recovery of the company: cash flow, self-financing capacity, goodwill, etc. In this paper we have tried to inspire the life of these financial concepts, approaching them contextually and carefully following the connections and interdependencies with other significant aspects of business operation. The figures acquire meaning and relevance only if they are interpreted in correlation with the multireferential and multidimensional reality of the company.
The profound structural changes that have taken place in the world economy as well as in the national one - globalization, dematerialization, crisis, etc. - urges us to look critically not only at managerial practices at different organizational levels of the economy, but also at the theoretical scaffolding that inspired them. The "decorporalization" of processes and economic value exerts particularly pressing effects in the sense of re-examining the concepts and theoretical models of most management sciences. The financial management of the enterprise not only is not an exception, but, on the contrary, is at the forefront of this conceptual innovation, as it is the field that has taken on the mission of answering some fundamental questions: What is currently the economic value and, in consequence, the value of the business (enterprise)?; What are the main factors (inducers) of business value ?; What are the means to stimulate the growth of business value? Of course, the issue of financial management is much more complex, but we must recognize that the other concerns are, directly or indirectly, only derivatives subordinated to these three crucial issues, and the dematerialization of the economy forces us to revise, sometimes even radically, traditional perspectives on them. The interest for the study of goodwill as a tool for diagnosis, evaluation and restructuring of business is generated and is in the area of these concerns: it is increasingly clear that an increasing part of the value of modern companies is intangible, goodwill representing the global financial approximation of the intangible capital held by enterprises.
The Authors