Apple Computer began as a two-man partnership in a garage. It grew rapidly and, by 1985, became a large publicly traded corporation with 60 million shares of stock and a total market value in excess of $1 billion. At that time, the firm's more visible cofounder, 30-year-old Steven Jobs, owned 7 million shares of Apple stock worth about $120 million.

Despite his stake in the company and his role in its founding and success, Jobs was forced to relinquish operating responsibilities in 1985 when Apple's financial performance turned sour, and he subsequently resigned altogether.

Of course, you can't keep a good entrepreneur down. Jobs went on to found Pixar Animation Studios, the company that is responsible for the animation in the hit movies Toy Story, A Bug's Life, and Finding Nemo. And just to show that what goes around comes around, Apple found itself struggling for relevance in a Wintel world and decided to go the sequel route when it hired a new interim chief executive officer (CEO): Steven Jobs! How successful was he at his new (old) job? In January 2000, Apple's board of directors granted Jobs stock options worth $200 million and threw in $90 million for the purchase and care of a Gulfstream V jet. Board member Edgar Woolard stated, "This guy has saved the company." By 2005, Jobs really had Apple on a roll, with a slew of innovative and highly successful products, including a very cool special edition iPod that is signed by all members of the band U2.

Understanding Jobs's journey from garage-based entrepreneur to corporate executive to ex-employee and, finally, to CEO takes us into issues involving the corporate form of organization, corporate goals, and corporate control, all of which we discuss in this chapter.

To begin our study of financial management, we address two central issues. First: What is corporate, or business, finance and what is the role of the financial manager? Second: What is the goal of financial management?