The McGraw-Hill Pocket Guide to Business Finance: 201 Decision-Making Tools for Managers

by Joel G. Siegel

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070575770
• ISBN13: 9780070575776
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 354 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Wonderful resource for financial and non-financial pros

The 201 tools contained in this small, highly useful book range from Acid Test (doing a quick ratio of financials) to Z-Scores. Each tool is listed alphabetically, its use explained, and instructions on how to use it is provided. What I particularly liked is the worked examples that accompany each tool.As an IT consultant who specializes in service delivery this book is not one I would normally include in my professional library. I was introduced to it when a colleague and I were writing a white paper on recovery management. We were searching for a way to link business imperatives to justification for investment in recovery strategies. We found one piece of the puzzle in this book - the Altman Z-Score. This tool predicts whether or not a company is likely to enter into bankruptcy within one or two years. This led to the development of a copyrighted model that addressed survival level objectives, and also became a key part of the Tarrani-Zarate Information Technologies Management Model. All this from a single entry in a small book!Aside from discovering a relatively obscure, but important, tool I also found other useful tools in this book. Because I am not a business consultant or financial expert the tools were like a cram course in financial management for non-financial people. For example, I was able to apply some of the tools to personal financial matters - the real costs of a loan become quickly apparent when you compute them. I was also able to employ some of the tools to conduct realistic cost/benefit analyses, examine trade-offs supporting approaches to projects, etc. In this respect this small book has significantly improved my professional skills and has inspired me to read other books on financial management.I strongly recommend this book - collection of tools really - to anyone who deals with finance, anyone who has P & L responsibilities, and business and IT consultants. The latter group will find this book to be invaluable for developing proposals, deliverables and project plans that add value.