Investment-bank

Investment banking is a competitive field. To this end, "Inside the Minds: Leading Investment Bankers, The Art & Science of Investment Banking," offers solid information on the many challenges for Wall Street firms. However, some of the bankers in this text needlessly try to sell the virtues of their firms and reduces the importance of this book.

Still and all, Daniel B. Bayly offers an outstanding synopsis of investment banking. He notes that "knowledge is power" and stresses the importance of professional client relationship managers. Moreover, he details how good investment bankers know how to "ask for and get the mandate." On the other hand, Oliver D. Cromwell waves the company flag too much and fails to offer a unprecedented vision.

Eduardo Mestre also authors a dynamic segment. His explanation of managing deals and advice for delivering bad news is superb. In conclusion, investment banking is about making informed decisions. Certainly, lenders and bankers need good financial information to conclude deals but all the authors also add that "emotional intelligence"...the understanding of personalities must be weighed to successfully conclude transactions.

Bert Ruiz

This is an account which does not delve enough into the psychology of Nick Leeson personally (as opposed to traders generally) to be interesting, and is too apologetic for the management debacle that was Barings. Skip it. Nick's disingenous account is better. Lefevre's story of about stock operators is better still

Unlike the previous reviewer, I found the book to be a captivating and educational read! The plot held my attention throughout the book, even through the technical descriptions of how investment futures work. I felt that the book was a balanced blend of story and analysis. If you want more than a superficial account of the Barings debacle, this is a good book for you.

It is true that this author focuses as much on the role of management in the fall of Barings as on Nick Leeson's role in it, which is fine. It is an opinion that she substantiates somewhat persuasively throughout the book. The reader gets the sense that Nick was just an opportunist who took advantage of a glaring management weakness at Barings. (The author will not be able to persuade you, however, that Nick is just a good guy who slipped. He's scum. I think the author was too lenient with him.) But through her account of Baring Bank's mismanagement of its Futures division, the author provides a very useful lesson for senior management out there.

The following text appears on reviews of numerous investment banking books on this site. I suspect someone at the Vault is advertising for their own book on other author's pages. It make you wonder if they wrote their own book.

"This book is a good overview of the investment banking business, but it is quite expensive. I would strongly recommend instead or in addition the Vault Career Guide to Investment Banking.... The Vault guide includes more detailed overviews of all the departments and functions of an investment bank including corporate finance, M&A, sales, trading, private client services, credit, etc. If you are a job seeker in investment banking also try the Vault Guide to Finance Interviews, which contains actual investment banking finance interview questions and answers and which I found to be enormously valuable in my Wall Street job search."

I have a feeling that the positive reviews and reccomendations for these books come from "Vault Staff" This book offers no detail, no history of banking, no detailed descriptions of banking operations, no examples of career paths, no information on how to get one's foot in the door, and no vision for the future of I-banking. This book was probably written by Googling "investment banking" and adding a few spelling errors.

There are much better books on the topic by respected authors such as Thomas Liaw and Charles Geisst.

This is the second Vault guide that I have read, and the second disappointment that I have had with this series. I really isn't a career guide at all, just a very short back ground on what IB is. You can find a description of IB on the internet for free. The only redeeming value is the "day in a life of", but even then, there are only a dozen pages or so. In all, you can find most of what is in the book for free on the internet. I won't be buying any more vault products, as they have little information, and more pages of ads for other vault products than pages of usefull information.

The book lists a series of financial theories without bringing any clear connection to operational risk. The tools and techniques presented can be seen in any other finance book. No examples are presented in general, making questionable the author's experience in the "measurement of operational risk" as stated in the title. This book will not raise your knowledge in the field.

The author has board knowledge in different areas, However, the book is too theoretical and lack of examples to discuss the practical application. It may be a book which may give you good background in the operational risks but could not give you a practical examples to use in practice.

While the root concepts explored in this book are somewhat relevant, the tone is bland and the info is quite out of date. The copyright is 2002 but the text was obviously written between 1991-92. There in no mention of the MLAT treaty which Switzerland has signed since this was published. Keep looking.

Like Adam Starchild's book, "Swiss Money Secrets", this book does not mention any disadvantages or drawbacks of the subject - there are only advantages. Second of all, most of the information is outdated. Althought the book was published in 2002, nearly all the information came from 1992 or 1993. Falkayn is still talking about the "new" Clinton administration and is still describing the poor economy in the US - remember this is the early 90's.

He tells the reader how bad the American system is by how much debt the US has, how poor the quality of education is, the amount of poverty, their broken health care system, their illiteracy rate, etc. Faklayn then uses this to persuade the reader to invest in Switzerland. He describes the advantages of different Swiss investments such as annuities, bonds, and trusts, but does not really describe how to get involved in those investments. I am left as clueless about Swiss investments before reading this book as well as after reading the book.

This book purports to be elementary and easy to understand. It also claims to introduce the reader to global finance. In fact, it does neither particularly well.

The language is unnecessarily ponderous and unclear, which is a shame. Finance doesn't need to be so academic, boring and confusing. The author does little to welcome neophytes into the financial world, and a lack of interesting visuals and examples doesn't help matters.

Furthermore, much of the book's focus is on generic markets (stocks, futures, etc.), rather than on global (overseas) markets. And so there isn't enough attention to the characteristics and peculiarities of foreign markets. Similarly, the major topics of global finance, that one might reasonably expect to be the meat of such a titled book, are mostly left to just one chapter (Global Finance) of 24 pages!

The book just doesn't fit the bill of a good introduction to global finance.

Very elementary book and writing style. The author puts himself forward as an experienced Fed Watcher but his ideas and theories seem naive and elementary. You can learn more about the Fed by surfing the Fed's website. Author keeps repeating himself like he is senile or something!??? The author does not offer any insight one could not glean from reading Business week or the Wall Street Journal regularly.

Don't waste your money on this!

This book accomplished none of its promises. It was repetitive and poorly written at best. If you are truly interested in learning how to be a Fed watcher, this book will not help you accomplish that goal. Do not waste your time with this book.

This is a slim book--a very slim book--full of very general and very basic advice on investing in general, which could have been found in any personal finance book. I was looking for SPECIFIC information on Islamic investing, and all I could find was very vague, and not very useful, information. In sum, about 10 percent of this tiny booklet is about Islam, and this is not much...