AbstractFor people working in finance, either in academia or in practice or in both, the combination of ‘finance’ and ‘multiple criteria’ is not obvious. However, we believe that many of the tools developed in the field of MCDM can contribute both to the quality of the financial economic decision making process and to the quality of the resulting decisions. In this paper we answer the question why financial decision problems should be considered as multiple criteria decision problems and should be treated accordingly. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.