Industry WIKI

The Aaron's Company, Inc., commonly known as Aaron's, is an American lease-to-own retailer. The company focuses on leases and retail sales of furniture, electronics, appliances, and computers. The company sells through company-operated and franchised stores and its e-commerce platform.

America's Best Contacts & Eyeglasses is a discount provider of eye examinations, eyeglasses and contact lenses, with over 1000 retail locations in the United States as of May 31, 2024.

Arbitrage ( , UK also ) is the practice of taking advantage of a difference in prices in two or more markets – striking a combination of matching deals to capitalize on the difference, the profit being the difference between the market prices at which the unit is traded. Arbitrage has the effect of causing prices of the same or very similar assets in different markets to converge.

An auction rate security (ARS) typically refers to a debt instrument (corporate or municipal bonds) with a long-term nominal maturity for which the interest rate is regularly reset through a Dutch auction. Since February 2008, most such auctions have failed, and the auction market has been largely frozen. In late 2008, investment banks that had marketed and distributed auction rate secur

A bailout is the provision of financial help to a corporation or country which otherwise would undergo bankruptcy. A bailout differs from the term bail-in (coined in 2010) under which the bondholders or depositors of global systemically important financial institutions (G-SIFIs) are forced to participate in the recapitalization process but taxpayers are not. Some governments also have th

The Black–Scholes or Black–Scholes–Merton model is a mathematical model for the dynamics of a financial market containing derivative investment instruments. From the parabolic partial differential equation in the model, known as the Black–Scholes equation, one can deduce the Black–Scholes formula, which gives a theoretical estimate of the price of European-style options and shows that t

Charles Thomas Munger (January 1, 1924 – November 28, 2023) was an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He was the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett, from 1978 until his death in 2023. Buffett described Munger as his closest partner and right-hand man, and credited him with being the "architect" of modern Berkshire Hathaway'

Christopher Tsai (born December 20, 1974) is a Chinese-American investor and noted art collector. He is the founder of Tsai Capital Corporation, a New York-based investment management firm.

A credit default swap (CDS) is a financial swap agreement that the seller of the CDS will compensate the buyer in the event of a debt default (by the debtor) or other credit event. That is, the seller of the CDS insures the buyer against some reference asset defaulting. The buyer of the CDS makes a series of payments (the CDS "fee" or "spread") to the seller and, in exchange, may expect

In finance, a currency swap (more typically termed a cross-currency swap, XCS) is an interest rate derivative (IRD). In particular it is a linear IRD, and one of the most liquid benchmark products spanning multiple currencies simultaneously. It has pricing associations with interest rate swaps (IRSs), foreign exchange (FX) rates, and FX swaps (FXSs).

David LeFevre Dodd (August 23, 1895 – September 18, 1988) was an American educator, financial analyst, author, economist, and investor. In his student years, Dodd was a protégé and colleague of Benjamin Graham at Columbia Business School.

In finance, a derivative is a contract between a buyer and a seller. The derivative can take various forms, depending on the transaction, but every derivative has the following four elements:

The early history of private equity relates to one of the major periods in the history of private equity and venture capital. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital experienced growth along parallel although interrelated tracks.

EmblemHealth Inc is one of the United States' largest nonprofit health plans. Headquartered at 55 Water Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, it is a multi-billion-dollar organization with over 3 million members.

Employee stock options (ESO or ESOPs) is a label that refers to compensation contracts between an employer and an employee that carries some characteristics of financial options.

Energy Future Holdings Corporation was an electric utility company headquartered in Energy Plaza in Downtown Dallas, Texas, United States. The majority of the company's power generation was through coal and nuclear power plants. From 1998 to 2007, the company was known as TXU Corporation until its $45 billion leveraged buyout by KKR, TPG, and Goldman Sachs Alternatives. That purchase was

Foreign ownership of companies of Canada pertains to the majority-ownership of Canadian-based assets (including businesses and subsidiaries) by non-Canadian individuals or companies, as well as to companies that are effectively owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by non-Canadians. "Non-Canadian," for all intents and purposes, refers to entities based outside Canada and to those

Gregory D. Brenneman (born November 26, 1961) is an American businessman. He serves as the chairman of CCMP Capital, an American private equity firm.

Global Trading Systems, which uses the trade name GTS, is an American proprietary trading and market making firm headquartered in New York. The firm accounts for 3 to 5 percent of the daily turnover of US equities and has handled over 250 IPO listings since 2013.

The history of private equity, venture capital, and the development of these asset classes has occurred through a series of boom-and-bust cycles since the middle of the 20th century. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital experienced growth along parallel, although interrelated tracks.

Howard Homan Buffett (August 13, 1903 – April 30, 1964) was an American businessman, investor, and politician. He was a four-term Republican United States representative for the state of Nebraska. He was the father of Warren Buffett, the businessman and investor.

Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (ICE) is an American multinational financial services company that operates global financial exchanges, including stock exchanges and futures exchanges, as well as clearing houses, and provides technology and services for mortgage loan origination, closing, and servicing.

James Edward Hanson, Baron Hanson (20 January 1922 – 1 November 2004) was an English industrialist who built his businesses through the process of leveraged buyouts through Hanson plc. Hanson's billion-dollar empire earned him the nickname "Lord Moneybags".

Walter Joseph "Jay" Clayton III (born July 11, 1966) is an American attorney who has served as the 9th director of national intelligence since August 2026. Clayton has additionally served as the White House AI czar since October 2026. He served as the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2025 to 2026 and as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commissi

A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money (leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loans, along with the assets of the acquiring company. The use of debt, which normally has a lower cost of capital than equity, serves to reduce the o

The following is a list of publicly traded companies, that have the largest market capitalization or "market value". Most or all of these companies would be categorized as megacap stocks.

Magic formula investing is an investment technique outlined by Joel Greenblatt that uses the principles of value investing.

Mr. Market is an allegory created by investor Benjamin Graham to describe what he believed were the irrational or contradictory traits of the stock market and the risks of following groupthink. Mr. Market was first introduced in his 1949 book, The Intelligent Investor.

The Pandora Papers are 11.9 million leaked documents with 2.9 terabytes of data that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published beginning on 3 October 2021. The leak exposed the secret offshore accounts of 35 world leaders, including current and former presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state as well as more than 100 business leaders, billionaires,

Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public. Instead, it is offered to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in managing and structuring the companies. Colloquially, "private equity" can refer to these investment firms rather than the companies in which they invest.

Private equity (PE) expanded throughout the 2010s. As of 2019, there were nearly 7,000 PE firms within the United States, nearly $2.5 trillion globally in unspent cash (known as dry powder), and deal-making in private equity accounted for 13% of global acquisitions.

Project SCUM was a plan proposed in 1995 by R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) to sell cigarettes to members of the "alternative lifestyle" areas of San Francisco, in particular the large number of gay people in the Castro and homeless people in the Tenderloin. The acronym "SCUM" officially stood for "subculture urban marketing". Perhaps recognizing the offensive nature of its label, t

Scripophily is the study and collection of stock and bond certificates. A specialized field of numismatics, scripophily has developed as an area of collecting because of the inherent beauty of certain historical certificates, and because of interest in the historical context of many of the documents. In addition, some stock certificates serve as excellent examples of engraving. Occasiona

See's Candy Shops, Inc., doing business as See's Candies, is an American manufacturer and distributor of candy, particularly chocolates. It was founded by Charles See, his wife Florence, and his mother Mary in Los Angeles in 1921. The company is headquartered in South San Francisco, California. See's kitchens are located at its headquarters and are also maintained at its original factory

In finance, a share class or share classification are different types of shares in company share capital that have different levels of voting rights. For example, a company might create two classes of shares class A share and a class B share where the class A shares have fewer rights than class B shareholders. This may be done to maintain control of a company by a group of shareholders o

A share price is the price of a single share of a number of saleable equity shares of a company.

In finance, the Sharpe ratio (also known as the Sharpe index, the Sharpe measure, and the reward-to-variability ratio) measures the performance of an investment such as a security or portfolio compared to a risk-free asset, after adjusting for its risk. It is defined as the difference between the returns of the investment and the risk-free return, divided by the standard deviation of the

A stock split or stock divide increases the number of shares in a company. For example, after a 2-for-1 split, each investor will own double the number of shares, and each share will be worth half as much. A stock split causes a decrease of market price of individual shares, but does not change the total market capitalization of the company: stock dilution does not occur.

A structured settlement is a negotiated financial or insurance arrangement through which a claimant agrees to resolve a personal injury tort claim by receiving part or all of a settlement in the form of periodic payments on an agreed schedule, rather than as a lump sum. As part of the negotiations, a structured settlement may be offered by the defendant or requested by the plaintiff. Ult

Tag-along rights (TARs) comprise a group of clauses in a contract which together have the effect of allowing the minority shareholder(s) in a corporation to also take part in a sale of shares by the majority shareholder to a third party under the same terms and conditions.

"The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville" is an article by Warren Buffett promoting value investing, published in the Fall, 1984 issue of Hermes, Columbia Business School magazine. It was based on a speech given on May 17, 1984, at the Columbia University School of Business in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd's book Security Analysis.

A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular publicly listed company or security on a particular stock exchange. Ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols or characters (generally Latin letters or digits) which provide a shorthand for investors to refer to, purchase, and research securities. Some exchanges include ti

Tokio Marine Holdings, Inc., is a multinational insurance holding company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the largest property/casualty insurance group in Japan in terms of revenue and is the parent company for the Tokio Marine Group which employs 39,000 people in 38 countries worldwide.

Value investing is an investment paradigm that involves buying securities that appear underpriced by some form of fundamental analysis. Modern value investing derives from the investment philosophy taught by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd at Columbia Business School starting in 1928 and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis.

Warren Edward Buffett ( BUFF-it; born August 30, 1930) is an American investor and philanthropist who is the chairman emeritus and former CEO of the conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway. As a result of his success, Buffett is one of the best-known investors in the world. According to Forbes, as of January 2026, Buffett's estimated net worth stood at US$148.9 billion, making him the ninth-rich

WeChat Pay (Chinese: 微信支付; pinyin: Wēixìn Zhīfù) is a mobile payment and digital wallet service by WeChat based in China that allows users to make mobile payments and online transactions. As of March 2016, WeChat Pay had over 300 million users. WeChat Pay reached 1.133 billion active users in 2023. WeChat Pay's main competitor in China and the market leader in online payments is Alibaba