Customer Reviews

India's Financial Markets: An Insider's Guide to How the Markets Work (Elsevier and IIT Stuart Center for Financial Markets Press)

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I have been intermittently teaching an introductory course on financial markets and corporate finance in India at Pace University for the last three years and have found it difficult to find a book that explained the modern Indian economy in a comprehensive yet fundamental and comprehensible manner. This book by Ajay Shah, Susan Thomas and Michael Gorham is a godsend. Not only does it provide information about the Indian financial markets, but it situates the information in an analytical framework, so that it becomes easy to interpret.

I must mention three chapters, in particular, which will indicate why this book is more than a simple collection of facts about Indian financial markets. Chapter 1 gives us a broad perspective of development in India, explicated using growth theory. Chapter 10 gives us a great overview of the different kinds of financial firms with an imaginative typology of these firms into fund-based, transaction-oriented and infrastructure firms. Chapter 11 provides us with a political economy of Indian financial markets, with (for such a book) a thorough treatment of the different regulatory institutions.

If the government takes the policy issues laid out in this chapter seriously, we could very easily see India developing into a mature financial market.

I think this is an excellent book, a five star book to be precise, but it is not really appropriate for me to be giving a rating to the book, because I'm one of the authors. if I could make the comment I wanted to without giving a rating, I would have, but to get a comment posted you have to give the book some stars and I'm certainly not going to give it anything less than five. Enough on that.

I'm the editor of a series on books on financial markets. It's a joint project between the international publishing company Elsevier and a little Center I run called the IIT Stuart Center for Financial Markets. I wanted the first book in our series to be on Indian financial markets and I knew the best two people to write it - Ajay Shah and Susan Thomas. I first met Susan when she came to Chicago on behalf of the National Stock Exchange of India to study how the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. I first met Ajay a year or two later during my first visit to India, which because of an air controllers strike was truncated to approximately 24 hours. I found them both to be tireless researchers, thoughtful questioners, and enthusiastic implementors.

At the time, both were professors at the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research. They both could have made a lot more money had they stayed in the US after getting their PhDs in Economics at USC, but they really wanted to contribute to the creation of a world class financial system in India. And contribute they did. They were the perfect professor - using economic and financial theory combined with empirical research to solve real world problems. They were instrumental in the development of the National Stock Exchange, which brought to India a transparent trading system that allowed investors for the first time to see the actual bids and offers availavible for each company. They developed the stock index, the S&P CNX Nifty, which is used for the overwhelming majority of all stock index derivative trading in India. They have served on numerous government committees. Susan was instrumental in convincing the government to consider the use of options to manage the risk of a shortfall in the wheat crop this past year. I could go on, but thepoint is I knew that they were perfect to write this book because they had been so involved in the markets and institutions that needed to be covered in the book. They wouldn't agree to do the book unless I did it with them, but I will tell you that this book is 90% pure Ajay Shah and Susan Thomas.

You would not be reading this note if you were not interested in India's financial system, so aside from sharing this story with you, I wanted to let you know that Ajay has one of the best financial blogs in India, which can be found at http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com/. I hope you buy and love our book, but whether you do or not, you should sheck out Ajay's blog to keep up on developments.

This book came highly recommended to me by my peers in the financial industry. It not only covers the basic information about the emerging financial markets in India but also traces its history and concludes with some highly insightful suggestions. The expertise in global financial markets of Prof. Gorham and the familiarity with the Indian markets of Mr. Ajay and Ms. Thomas is highly reflective through the frequent comparison of the Indian financial entities with their counterparts in other countries. Such comparisons have made the book more informative and understandable.

The chapters on firms, exchanges, and real estate make an interesting read. The authors have provided relevant graphical representations of the trends and supported them with valid reasoning. Also, there is a pictorial presentation of major movers and shakers of Indian financial markets!

I highly recommend this book to students and professionals who want to gain an insight into the emerging markets of India or intend to research certain aspects of these markets. This book definitely can be considered as the first and most comprehensive study of Indian Financial Markets.

- Abhishek Rai
Google Inc.

My search for the information on Indian Financial Markets ended up when I went through this book. Book contains the most updated information on one of the world's rising economies. An excellent and valuable reference on the totality of Indian markets.
I used this book for my presentation on a topic related to investment banking in India. Book is very well written.
I would recommend the book for anybody/everybody who wants to know about Indian financial markets.

I got hold of the book while I was preparing a presentation for Indian Debt Markets but ended up reading the whole book!

The eloquent style of writing makes it easier to grasp details and keeps you enthralled even while reading numbers. It provides deep insight into the Indian Financial Scene and you would find several interesting points which you might have assumed otherwise. It succinctly shows the state of each financial sector and possible improvements are suggested. The last chapter gives you a practical insight into what can Global Financial Firms can expect from the Indian Market and what bottlenecks they may face.

An excellent read.

I used this book to get an insight into the India Financial Markets, helped a lot, very informative and lucid content. Absolutely worth the money!