Guide to Analysing Companies


Book Description

In today's volatile, complex and fast-moving business world, it can be difficult to gauge how sound a company really is. An apparently strong balance sheet and impressive reported profits may be hiding all sorts of problems that could even spell bankruptcy. So how do you: Know whether a company is well run and doing well? Decide which ratios and benchmarks to use to assess performance? Work out if a company has massaged its results? Recognize the danger signs on the corporate horizon? Compare companies operating in different sectors or countries? These and many other important questions are answered in a completely updated and revised sixth edition of this clear and comprehensive guide. It is aimed at anyone who wants to understand a company's annual report, judge a customer's creditworthiness, assess a company's investment potential, and much more.




Guide to Financial Markets


Book Description

The revised and updated 7th edition of this highly regarded book brings the reader right up to speed with the latest financial market developments, and provides a clear and incisive guide to a complex world that even those who work in it often find hard to understand. In chapters on the markets that deal with money, foreign exchange, equities, bonds, commodities, financial futures, options and other derivatives, the book examines why these markets exist, how they work, and who trades in them, and gives a run-down of the factors that affect prices and rates. Business history is littered with disasters that occurred because people involved their firms with financial instruments they didn't properly understand. If they had had this book they might have avoided their mistakes. For anyone wishing to understand financial markets, there is no better guide.




Guide to Financial Management


Book Description

A practical and accessible overview of the fundamentals of business finance -- now in its third edition. Managers are constantly expected to make decisions that reflect a full understanding of the financial consequences. In the absence of formal training, few people are prepared for the responsibilities of dealing with management reports, budgets, and capital proposals, and find themselves embarrassed by their lack of understanding. This book is a practical guide to understanding and managing financial responsibilities. Each chapter examines actual tasks managers have to do, from "how to assemble a budget," "how to read variances on a report," to "how to construct a proposal to invest in new equipment," exploring the principles that can be applied to each task, illustrating practical ways these principles are used, and providing guidance for implementation. Guide to Financial Management will help readers understand financial jargon, financial statements, management accounts, performance measures, budgeting, costing, pricing, decision-making, and investment appraisal. This third edition has been fully revised and expanded with detailed examples from 100 leading businesses around the world.




Numbers Guide


Book Description

Designed as a companion to The Economist Style Guide, the best-selling guide to writing style, The Economist Numbers Guide is invaluable to anyone who wants to be competent and able to communicate effectively with numbers. In addition to general advice on basic numeracy, the guide points out common errors and explains the recognized techniques for solving financial problems, analysing information of any kind, and effective decision making. Over one hundred charts, graphs, tables, and feature boxes highlight key points. Also included is an A–Z dictionary of terms covering everything from amortization to zero-sum game. Whatever your business, The Economist Numbers Guide will prove invaluable.




The Economist Numbers Guide


Book Description

Updated and revised, the 'Numbers Guide' is an invaluable source for everyone in business who wants to be competent and able to communicate effectively with numbers.




Guide to Investment Strategy


Book Description

Now in its fourth edition, this classic guide to investment strategy has been revised to give up-to-date ideas on pensions, investments of passion and more. Peter Stanyer and Stephen Satchell's Guide to Investment Strategy looks at the risks and opportunities of uncomplicated strategies and comes with wealth warnings for those who wish to explore more sophisticated approaches. It explains the importance of insights from behavioral analysis, the principles of traditional finance, and highlights how habitual patterns of decision-making can lead any of us into costly mistakes. After all, markets are most dangerous when most rewarding.




Business Strategy


Book Description

The effectiveness of a good strategy well implemented determines a business' future success or failure. Yet history is full of strategic decisions, big and small, that were ill-conceived, poorly organized and consequently disastrous. This updated guide looks at the whole process of strategic decision-making, from vision, forecasting, and resource allocation, through to implementation and innovation. Strategy is about understanding where you are now, where you are heading and how you will get there. There is no room for timidity or confusion. Although the CEO and the board decide a company's overall direction, it is the managers at all levels of the organization who will determine how the vision can be transformed into action. In short, everyone is involved in strategy. But getting it right involves difficult choices: which customers to target, what products to offer, and the best way to keep costs low and service high. And constantly changing business conditions inevitably bring risks. Even after business strategy has been developed, a company must remain nimble and alert to change, and view strategy as an ongoing and evolving process. The message of this guide is simple: strategy matters, and getting it right is fundamental to business success.




The Economist Guide to Economic Indicators


Book Description

Explaining the significance of economic statistics and their relevance to everyday business, this guide provides a basic understanding of what the figures are, how they are compiled and how they fit together and how this knowledge can be applied to industry, commerce, politics and consumer affairs. The information allows small and medium-sized business to be as responsive to economic trends as conglomerates. This book is another in the series following Numbers Guide and Style Guide.




Financial Statement Analysis


Book Description

Praise for Financial Statement Analysis A Practitioner's Guide Third Edition "This is an illuminating and insightful tour of financial statements, how they can be used to inform, how they can be used to mislead, and how they can be used to analyze the financial health of a company." -Professor Jay O. Light Harvard Business School "Financial Statement Analysis should be required reading for anyone who puts a dime to work in the securities markets or recommends that others do the same." -Jack L. Rivkin Executive Vice President (retired) Citigroup Investments "Fridson and Alvarez provide a valuable practical guide for understanding, interpreting, and critically assessing financial reports put out by firms. Their discussion of profits-'quality of earnings'-is particularly insightful given the recent spate of reporting problems encountered by firms. I highly recommend their book to anyone interested in getting behind the numbers as a means of predicting future profits and stock prices." -Paul Brown Chair-Department of Accounting Leonard N. Stern School of Business, NYU "Let this book assist in financial awareness and transparency and higher standards of reporting, and accountability to all stakeholders." -Patricia A. Small Treasurer Emeritus, University of California Partner, KCM Investment Advisors "This book is a polished gem covering the analysis of financial statements. It is thorough, skeptical and extremely practical in its review." -Daniel J. Fuss Vice Chairman Loomis, Sayles & Company, LP




The Chief Financial Officer


Book Description

The rapid rise in importance of the role of the chief financial officer -- from back-office accountant to front-line executive -- is unrivaled by that of any other corporate position. With access to every facet of the business, CFOs now wield a level of influence matched only by chief executives. This book explains how CFOs earned their privileged status, and what the future may hold for them. It describes their ever-expanding role, and how they are reshaping their departments to help them deal with that transformation. Insights from current and former CFOs provide a first-hand perspective on finance leaders' aspirations and doubts. It is a useful reference for finance chiefs seeking to learn from peers and benchmark their own performance; for those looking to build a career in the C-Suite; for managers seeking to improve their relationship with the finance department; for service providers -- banks, accountancies and consulting firms -- and anyone else who wants to get on the good side of the keeper of the corporate checkbook.