Customer Reviews

Mastering Financial Modelling: A practitioner's guide to applied corporate finance (Market Editions)

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

 

 

if you actually install the files, instead of running them off of the write-protected CD-ROM, you can edit them.

Even if you copy the templates to your hard drive, you CANNOT customise the many password-protected spreadsheet templates included on the CD.

Even more disappointingly, the password prevents you from using Excel's audit function to trace formulae components.

This means that to understand formulae one must resort to the tedious, stone-age method of looking in the formula bar and noting down by hand that the formula is, for example," = (sum (A6:G12)) * [next sheet!]Q7 + ([sheet 7!]T78 / [sheet 3!] c24)", and then translating it all into English.

In summary, if you want to teach yourself from this book it will cost you a very substantial time investment in addition to the book's cover price.

Some good ideas about applying Microsoft Excel are included in book and the accompanying CD-ROM. But unfortunately the included models are not practical for most American readers. They use English nomenclature - NPAT instead of Net Income, etc. - and have formatting that looks ok on screen but is less than presentation quality when printed.

The author has password protected the spreadsheets so you can't customize them to your own needs. A serious drawback for the serious user, clearly the intended readership for this book.

It seems as if I'm the pariah -- given the lukewarm nature of the preceeding reviews -- but, not afraid to sound contrarian, I unreservedly give this book five stars.

I believe "Mastering Financial Modelling" is not only one of the best books on the subject, but it is simple to read and understand, and convinces the reader that creating your own financial models is a lot of fun. I'm not sure you can acquire the same sense of satisfaction after reading its competition.

If you aren't sure about this book's utility as regards your immediate needs, feel free to visit www.financial-models.com, which gives a superficial representation of what you'll find in the book.

PS: I owned Benninga's "Financial Modelling" for about 4 years, before I sold it so that I could buy Day's book. Benninga's book is good for finance formulars and so on, but Day goes a step farther and gives you real models with the formulars and explains in greater detail how things like Combo Boxes work and so forth.

The only quirk with this book is that it does not come with a CD-Rom as promised on the website. I was pretty upset at first and e-mailed the author about it. But he quickly referred me to the Financial Times website, where I was able to obtain free downloads. If you own a MAC the files might not work for you. Nonetheless, I believe this is a relatively minor distraction in an otherwise fantastically put together piece of work.

Some good ideas about applying Microsoft Excel are included in book and the accompanying CD-ROM. But unfortunately the included models are not practical for most American readers. They use English nomenclature - NPAT instead of Net Income, etc. - and have formatting that looks ok on screen but is less than presentation quality when printed.

The author has password protected the spreadsheets so you can't customize them to your own needs. A serious drawback for the serious user, clearly the intended readership for this book.

Zero-. Author is more concerned of protecting his macros and VBA modules then to give real knowledge to the readers. So the rest of his books flooding the market, instead of just One but really good.