This overview of the financial history of St John's College, Oxford from the College's foundation in 1555 up until 1980 documents in detail how the richest college in Oxford very nearly lost everything. As well as providing a window on the past, Intellectual Capital also gives historical perspective to challenges the College faces today. Drawing on three main data sources - including the College's own archives and the Ministry of Housing and local government records available at the National Archives - Intellectual Capital establishes a quantitative overview of College's financial history and investigates in depth the financial decision-making behind, and consequences of, the development of North Oxford. Despite St John's' extensive records and a more varied financial history than almost any other Oxbridge college, this is the first time the finances of St John's have received such detailed attention.

Matthew Ford read History and Economics at St John's College, Oxford, and then got interested in decision theory, working as a researcher for economists Professor Sir John Kay and Mervyn King on Radical Uncertainty and other projects. He returned to St John's to write an academic and financial history of the College in an attempt to see how well the theories of decision-making he had studied explained real decisions over time.