James Morris is a Professor of Finance at the University of Colorado, Denver where he teaches courses in financial management, financial modeling, and investment and firm valuation. He received his B.S., M.B.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and is an Accredited Member of the ASA. He has served previously on the faculties of the University of Houston and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of ‘Life and Death of Businesses: A Review of Research on Firm Mortality', in the Journal of Business Valuation and Economic Loss Analysis that is the basis for this seminar. He has published research papers dealing with capital structure, cost of capital, working capital management, financial modeling, and firm valuation in top academic journals such as Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial & Quantitative Analysis, and Management Science. In addition, he has published articles about cost of capital, corporate growth rates, and methods for calculating firm value in Business Valuation Review. He is the co-author of the Introduction to Financial Models for Management and Planning, CRC Press, 2009, and the author of Dow Jones-Irwin Guide to Financial Modeling.