Customer Reviews

The Bank Analyst's Handbook: Money, Risk and Conjuring Tricks

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is refreshing to read a book that is written like a conversation and not like a textbook, yet one that contains the appropriate financial rigors.

If you want to catch up with modern banking and look at it from an analyst's view, this is your book. I enjoyed it very much and use it as a reference often

This book by Mr. Stephen Frost about banks is a good introduction to the banking industry for people with some knowledge in Accounting and Finance.

This book covers some basics the financial system and how banks make money by taking deposits and lending out money. It also covers risk management, capital management, banking crises and other topics. As an experienced bank analyst, Mr. Frost wrote about valutions and analyses of banks from a practical point of view, so you would not see many very theoretical or quantitative treatements on these topics. This makes the book a readable for audience with reasonable knowledge in Accounting and Finance, who wants to understand more about how banks work and how to value them, as these things were not taught in most business schools.

Frost's book gets 4 stars based on its strength and accessibility as an introduction, it's clarity (for the most part), and the breadth of topics that he covers related to banks and the banking industry.

Unfortunately, Frost's understanding of economics is poor, leading to a relatively shallow (but certainly textbook these days) discussion of central banking and the regulatory framework in general. He, like so many other modern writers in finance and economics, would benefit greatly from actually reading a sound economic theorist, like Henry Hazlitt or Ludwig von Mises, rather than sporadically quoting JK Galbraith and Adam Smith. This lack of understanding on his part at times undermines the conceptual framework of the book, detracting from its clarity.

A few final praises and quibbles: His use of clear examples to illustrate important points is very welcome, but there are a few cases where he could give a fuller explanation (e.g., the 20yr mortgage example). I like the diagrams showing flows of funds and parties to common transactions, but he could have picked a better font, as the small cursive script is not always easy to read. Finally, what's with the front cover art, seriously?

Overall, I'm quite satisfied and thankful for the book. Definitely buy it if you are in the industry.

This could have very well have an extremely strong book intended for the analytical community. It fell short of that for me.

What is an absolute mystery to me is why the author or the author's publishing house chose to use ridiculously cute and almost impossible to read sticky note cursive handwriting visualizations for the key idea take away visualizations throughout the text.

The proper use of visualization is to make key ideas jump off the page and get key points across to the reader. Instead, this book does not do that. For an example, please refer to:

International Financial Management (Mcgraw-Hill/Irwin Series in Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) Understanding the intersection of global macroeconomics and corporate finance is definitely a challenge, however Eun and Resnick greatly assist the reader with their clean approach.

I assume the target audience of this book is the strong analytical community that would be very definitely attracted to such a text. We expect a serious text to look and appear as such. This text, in my opinion, unfortunately falls short of that.

I was very disappointed with this title and decided to return it to Amazon. Also, I would not recommend this title to any serious financial professional.