Accounting for M&A, Equity, and Credit Analysts [Hardcover]

James Morris (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0071429697 | ISBN-13: 978-0071429696 | Publication Date: June 18, 2004 | Edition: 1

As each new accounting question or scandal hits Wall Street, investment professionals too often find themselves asking, “What happened?” Accounting for M&A, Equity, and Credit Analysts answers the most common accounting questions, all in an easy-to-follow format designed to provide investment professionals with real-world, hands-on knowledge of key accounting treatments, models, and practices. Written by well-known M&A expert James E. Morris, this versatile accounting desk reference bridges the gap between what is taught in business school and what is needed in the real world.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Everything investment professionals need to know about accounting--in a practical desk reference format

In today's world of constantly changing accounting rules, models, and practices, investment professionals need an authoritative, all-in-one, fast-access reference for the latest knowledge and information. Accounting for M&A, Equity, and Credit Analysts provides comprehensive and easy-to-understand answers to the everyday accounting questions that come up time and again in the investing arena.

Noted M&A accounting authority James E. Morris has spent years dispensing accounting advice on Wall Street, and he knows which questions consistently baffle even the most experienced investment pros. He answers those questions and hundreds more as he provides clear and concise explanations of areas including:

• Subtle, less understood aspects of common accounting areas and procedures
• Purchase accounting for business combinations--essential not only for M&A analysts but for credit and equity analysts as well
• Accounting for employee stock options, and its effect on both earnings and cash flow

Today's investment accounting landscape is undergoing tumultuous and unprecedented change. Professionals who fail to keep up with that change risk being left behind. Accounting for M&A, Equity, and Credit Analysts updates you on virtually every important facet of investment accounting, and provides the handy reference you need to instantly know what the numbers are really saying to you--and, just as important, what they are not.

"This is not, by any means, another financial accounting textbook. Instead, I intend it as a sort of spotlight, illuminating what I have found in my investment experience to be the 'black holes' of accounting. It is merely the collected answers to the questions that analysts (associates, vice presidents, managing directors and clients as well) have asked me during the time I spent giving accounting advice on Wall Street."

--From the Preface

Investment professionals too often regard the acquisition of accounting knowledge as a necessary evil--and, therefore, too often know less than they should. This lack of knowledge often leads to simple misunderstandings or even out and out errors that, at best, serve as minor speed bumps in a high-stakes transaction and, at worst, lead to the delay or even derailing of the deals in question.

Accounting for M&A, Equity, and Credit Analysts helps investment professionals as well as undergraduate and graduate students of and investment banking ensure that they will always be able to quickly and confidently get their hands on the right answers to virtually every accounting question. Providing easy-access accounting information without needless detail and CPA doublespeak, this invaluable reference distinguishes itself from other texts of its type in four major areas as it:

• Bypasses common-knowledge accounting basics to concentrate only on information vital to investment analysts
• Takes an investment banking perspective as opposed to one solely focused on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and reporting
• Integrates financial modeling and spreadsheet approaches that are essential to forecasting and analysis
• Provides in-depth coverage of items in enterprise valuation and business combination transactions

In the investment profession, few factors are as valuable or overlooked as solid knowledge in accounting. Unfortunately, when professionals seek to increase their accounting expertise, they are too often faced with either cartoonish workbooks or incomprehensible, 600-page textbooks.

Accounting for M&A, Equity, and Credit Analysts provides investment professionals, analysts, and bankers with only the information they need to understand how accounting impacts their everyday environment. The first investment accounting desk reference to bridge the gap between what is taught in business school and what is actually needed in the real world, it allows investment pros to focus on and truly understand the vital accounting details they encounter every day--and helps them ensure that minor accounting misunderstandings or mistakes won't mushroom into major deal-killers.

About the Author

James E. Morris, C.P.A., C.F.A. (Baltimore, MD) is a project manager of financial analysis for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He also trains analysts and associates to value companies.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (June 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071429697
• ISBN-13: 978-0071429696
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #499,112 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent coverage of areas usually left out, January 15, 2010

By 

N. Bertini "PiPPo NYC" (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Accounting for M&A, Equity, and Credit Analysts (Hardcover)

This book provides an excellent coverage of topics usually ignored in business school or accounting classess, as they are very complicated. I would recommend this book not to beginners but to people with solid understanding of basic finance and Excel modeling. It helped me a lot to advance my knowledge.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for Equity Research Analysts, January 17, 2012

By 

Adriano B - See all my reviews

This review is from: Accounting for M&A, Equity, and Credit Analysts (Hardcover)

I've been working as an equity research analyst for almost a year now and have accumulated a large number of questions related to the conciliation of accounting and valuation, especially on how to model especific accounting problems to get the most from valuation models. This book was exactly what I was looking for, combining both accounting strictness in terms of rules to be applied with modelling aspects adressing issues related to equity analysts daily duties. I rate this book as very helpful in solving not only new analysts problems, but the ones many senior analysts have as well.

4.0 out of 5 stars EEOO, May 18, 2011

By 

EEOO - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Accounting for M&A, Equity, and Credit Analysts (Hardcover)

I bought the book as I am doing the CFA program and find the book is good for someone like me not major or practice in accounting to get knowledge of some advanced level of financing accounting knowledge in an easy but meaningful way. Of course understanding financial accounting is important for valuation and know where the pitfalls would come or hide when doing investment analysis, and that exactly the aim of the book.
I suggest you to have one even you are practicing accounting.
The only thing is I cannot contact the author to say thank you and ask him to publish a more updated version of the book.