Abstract
International financial management, essentially an extension of corporate finance to a global
context has undergone an extraordinary metamorphosis since the mid-1960’s. From a
relatively stable and predictable economic environment at that time, the forces of inflation,
technological innovation, and deregulation led to new and volatile markets and a plethora of
financial instruments. Many of these developments would not have been possible without
the academic research in this subject which went from mainly descriptive and anecdotal to
analytical. Arguably the most important theoretical developments in finance took place since
then: the capital asset pricingmodel [CAPM], option pricingmodels, and the recognition of
agency costs as a potential conflict of interest between management and shareholders of a
firm. These are still areas of disagreement: the cost of capital for a company with global
markets and investors needs more study; managing currency, interest rate, and other risks in
a complex international organization is still a work in progress. On balance, the case can be
made that the changes seen over more than three decades have been positive.