ABSTRACT Let X, Y be two Banach spaces over K = ℝ \[\mathbb{K}=\mathbb{R}\] or ℂ \[\mathbb{C}\] , and let f := F+C be a weakly coercive operator from X onto Y, where F is a Fredholm proper operator, and C is a C 1-compact operator. Sufficient conditions are provided to assert that the perturbed operator f is a C 1-diffeomorphism. When one of these conditions does not hold and instead y is a regular value, the equation f(x) = y has at most finite number of solutions. As a consequence of the main result two corollaries are given. A second theorem studies the finite dimensional case. As an application, one example is given. The proof of our results is based on properties of Fredholm operators, as well as on local and global inverse mapping theorems.