Investment-management

Bierman and Smidt's work is generally considered to be a classic in its field. Anyone seriously interested in a cogent, well structured, and logically developed textbook on the economic analysis of investment projects MUST study Bierman and Smidt. This book is not "just another finance text" because capital budgeting straddles two disciplines: finance and operations. This book does justice to both fields remarkably well.

i found that book is very useful for me. it contains most important things about banking. and i need it.

This is a splendid book. Not only does it give an easy-to-read history of Mercury Asset Management of the UK up to its acquisition by Merrill Lynch, it also gives additional insights into the life of Siegmund Warburg (detailed in Ron Chernow's "The Warburgs") and represents a vivid insider's account of any business, told by Peter Stormonth Darling, chairman of Mercury from 1979 to 1992.

If you have read other investment management company histories such as Diana Henriques's "Fidelity's World" or Robert Slater's "The Vanguard Experiment", this book should be on your reading list as yet another view. Mercury, though not well known in the US, had something like US$180 billion under management at the time of its acquisition by Merrill Lynch, certainly not a small amount in the asset management league tables worldwide. Though Mr. Stormonth Darling is admittedly not an investment practitioner himself, he does appear to have a keen insight into people and the view from the top of the organization.

The book lays bare the importance of personnel (and their happiness) to the success of companies such as Mercury and Warburgs, and discusses at some length possible reasons why Warburgs was sold at very little premium to Swiss Bank in 1995, while Mercury was sold to Merrill Lynch at twice its prevailing market value in 1997.

It's also interesting to reflect that Mercury was at the top of its game in 1997, as a leading fund manager in Britain, yet it still sold out to a large foreign firm, as many leading British financial firms have done in recent years. I hope that the individual British personnel of these foreign masters, whether Continental European, American, or Asian, strive to maintain their intellectual independence as time goes on. The investing public continues to need alternative viewpoints on investments, such as that expressed by Andrew Smithers (also once part of Mercury) and Stephen Wright in their 2000 book "Valuing Wall Street".

Please do give "City Cinderella" a read, and enjoy Mr. Stormonth Darling's delicious follow-up details such as (p. 89) "...at last report [said person] was living in Panama with his fourth wife and their poodle, Chanel."

This book is currently out of print, so you will need to find it at a used book retailer or in your favorite library, perhaps. Regardless of how you get it, it is well worth the effort. It consists of 80 or so original short articles by the best investors and financial authors of all time--people like Paul Cabot, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, Jesse Livermore, T. Rowe Price, John Burr Williams, David Babson, Peter Bernstein, Phil Fisher, G.M. Loeb, Harry Markowitz, Warren Buffett, Edward C. Johnson, William Sharpe, Arthur Zeikel, Barton Biggs, David Dreman, Charlie Ellis, Bennett Goodspeed, Roy Neuberger, John Train, Richard Brealey, John Templeton and Byron Wein. If there's a better collection of important investment writings, I don't know what it is. (There is a Classics II, however, which is a follow-on book to this one.) As they say on those television infomercials, it would take you forever and cost a small fortune to duplicate this collection of the most memorable writings of the finest minds in investing. In terms of what you'll get for what you pay, this book is simply a steal.

Managing a Portfolio of Mutual Funds is a well written, entertaining, book that will help anyone better understand money management using Mutual Funds. The book starts with an excellent section on goals and planning, in which Rutherford makes a compelling argument about why this is a critical step towards effective financial management and explains how to best complete and document the plan. He follows this with a discussion of Asset Class Portfolio Design, which is the foundation for the rest of the book. Once this introductory material is finished, Rutherford discusses various investment strategies and how to implement and monitor each of them, starting from the more basic ideas of Passive Investing and Index Funds and moving to the more complex areas of Active Investing and Manager Style Analysis. Although the amount of detail gets a bit thin once he begins the chapter on Passive Investing and the book never regains the tight, lucid arguments and explanations of the first sections, it's a first-rate book on investing with Mutual Funds and should be read by every serious investor AND portfolio manager.

An outstanding book on portfolio theory and management. Covers all relevant topics with breadth and depth. Can be used as a single text for teaching. Complete in it's content. Useful for the novice and the professional. There should be a paperback version for students.

Jess Lederman, one of the editors of this book, has written or edited many books on mortgage banking, markets and interest rate risk - he is simply the most-informed writer on the subject, and if this is your area of interest I recommend you pick up anything he's been involved with and read it.

For a graduate student in finance with an interest in derivatives, this is an excellent introduction to
* structural credit risk models (starting from Merton 1974, guiding the reader to very recent models)
* change of numeraire techniques
* the extension of structural credit models for option valuation.

Although - at first sight - it seems to be very technical, this is definitely the most accessible book in this area I have ever seen!

I am continually pleased with each and every fabozzi book I buy. The man is prolific and always provides you with real data, great overviews, and commentary by leading people in the field. This book is no exception.

This is an excellent summary of the basics of building business relations in Taiwan. It can be read on the airplane on the way to Taiwan, or at home while you are planning the trip. Foreigners would be greatly benefited by taking the helpful hints that Kevin Chambers provides in this fact filled little book.