If corporations are businesses and some business are corporations, then shouldn’t corporate finance and business finance be the same thing? Well, not really. Even though a corporation is technically a business, there’s a different type of finance that applies to a corporation than say, a sole proprietorship. Confused, yet? Hang in there. A more thorough explanation is coming.

Corporate finance deals with the financial decisions that a corporation makes in its day to day operations. It focuses on using the capital the corporation currently has to make more money while simultaneously minimizing risks of certain decisions. The ultimate goal is to increase wealth of the corporation’s shareholders.

Business finance has a focus on the financial decisions made in all types of business – including, but certainly not limited to, corporations. Business finance deals with the same underlying concept of raising capital for business use, but also incorporates capital management. Managing accounts receivable

Initial Public Offering, or IPO, is when the corporation makes its first sale of common shares on a public stock exchange. An IPO’s primary goal is to make money for the corporation. Not all corporations have an IPO. Some choose to remain privately invested companies and never have stock that’s traded on a public exchange market. (more…)