First Order Description of Black Holes in Moduli Space

We show that the second order field equations characterizing extremal solutions for spherically symmetric, stationary black holes are in fact implied by a system of first order equations given in terms of a prepotential W. This confirms and generalizes the results in hep-th/0702088. When the black holes are solutions of extended supergravities we are able to find an explicit expression for the prepotentials which reproduce all the attractors of the four dimensional N>2 theories. We discuss a possible extension of our considerations to the non extremal case.