Bachelor Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,7, University of Applied Sciences Essen, language: English, abstract: 1.3 Scope of Work The thesis is divided into two main parts. In the first part, the theoretical background of value-based management is explained in detail. First, the reasons are pointed out why traditional key figures are not suitable to measure the corporate success and as a result, why value-based concepts are used. Subsequently, the methodologies for the determination of a company's cost of capital and for corporate valuation are presented in detail. The consideration of both the cost for equity capital and debt capital add the element of risk to determine the actual performance. This knowledge is the basis for multi-period value-based planning. Secondly, the most common approaches based on this theoretical background are introduced and elaborated. They integrate the key target of increasing the corporate value sustainably in the long term as a business philosophy which creates a holistic framework of action for the diverse tasks within a company. The second part brings to light, which companies of the thirty companies listed in the DAX are reporting a value-based management approach and further, which approaches these companies have implemented. As the parameters on which the calculation is based differ and are defined in different ways by the companies analyzed, these figures are surveyed. Even though not all companies which are using a value-based approach do report information about it in their annual reports or in other publications, especially the annual reports give information about the extent of spread. Literature is taken into account up to January 1, 2011. The two last annual reports including IFRS financial statements are considered for the analysis which were published by all companies listed in the DAX at that date.