Customer Reviews

EVA: The Real Key to Creating Wealth

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The book was more a commercial for the consulting firm of Stern Stewart than a book with real content for those looking to understand EVA. While some of the real-life examples were interesting, the book tended to drone on. The EVA "revolution" they spoke to seems less a revolution than a few managements doing the right thing and aligning employee and corporate goals. It's interesting that a couple of firms they cite adopting EVA have run into recent trouble with one, Harnischfeger, filing Chapter 11.

EVA, the ... creating wealth starts of in a nice pace laying some of the ground work to why companies should move to an EVA view on their business performance. However, after a chapter or so one might expect that the book shifts its focus to showing how to implement EVA in a real life organization. It is especially in this area that the books seriously lacks content. The numbers of all the SternStewart clients look great but not a single "How-to-EVA" step can be found in the book. The book stops after the sales pitch and expects the reader to contact SternStewart to take it from there. It is for this reason that I do not feel any economic value added from this book, and do not recommend others to lock up any capital or effort into this book.

Bottom line: nice concept, no content

This book does not contain any tangible methods to evaluate and implement EVA in a corporation. If the content of the book was summarized in one chapter or had been written in magazine article, it would be phenomenal reading.

I purchased this book hoping to understand EVA and how to apply it to my stock investments. This book is nothing more than a sales brochure for Stern Stewart. It has some examples of some companies that have prospered using EVA. However, it doesn't tell you how to calculate EVA or how to apply it to your business model. It is a redundant book that continuously says "EVA is better than GAAP earnings, look at what happened at this company." I strongly suggest you pass and apply your money elsewhere if you want to understand EVA.

Ehrbar's book is criticized properly as a "sales brochure", but it also came in handy as a primer to the subject of EVA and as a tool to decide whether or not to tackle G. Bennet Stewart's tome "The Quest for Value". This book will either get you hooked on the concept, or will push you away. If you get hooked, Stewart's book rounds out the knowledge to implement. I believe that they have found the measurement that correlates the value of the business -- classically found through good cash flow analysis -- with management performance. EVA defines success if used properly.

This book outlines in very basic terms the benefits enjoyed by companies that employ EVA (economic value added), which is basically a capital charge that is applied to a company's net contribution in order to assess the performance of the capital employed. Though the book does outline some interesting examples of how EVA programs can be expanded and applied to most functions in an organization, the book unfortunately dwells more on how the author's COMPANY can benefit those who might wish to employ an EVA program. The EVA concept is powerful and can be easily explained in ten pages. The rest of the book is filled with numerous seemingly redundant andecdotes and fluff, presumably to add some physical weight. The book also lacks practical examples of variations and treatments of EVA that could be potentially useful to managers of different types of organizations. I would highly recommend that potential purchasers look elsewhere for a better explanation of EVA and its powerful attributes.

I bought this book based on the glowing reviews below, but as it turned out, the only reveiwer telling the truth was the one who calls this book a big commercial for Stern-Stewart.

Yes, EVA is a valuable, useful tool that has brought accounting out of the dark ages, but you already knew that -- that's why you're looking for books on EVA, right? Unfortunately, this particular book goes to a lot of trouble to try to convince you of what I just stated in the previous sentence. There. Now you don't need to buy this book.

I wish I could tell you which book to buy about how to practically implement EVA in your company, but, unfortunately, I'm still looking for a book that does that.

This book is an excellent testament to Stern Stewart and EVA. It sings loudly the praises of EVA and the wonderful accomplishments of Stern Stewart. Coincidentally it suggests that Stern Stewart are available for consultancy!

The principle of EVA appears sound, but this book is poor at attempting to illustrate how to practically use it. It is also very biased towards EVA and dead-set against all other tools.

how could someone give it a five stars rating when in fact there is nothing in this book that really tell you much about eva except the fact that it improves company performance, not the how and why,

I had a great approach to EVA concept but it too much simple in finances. Any way it is a good point to start the trip through the EVA world.