Customer Reviews

Principles of Corporate Finance with S&P bind-in card

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book is an introduction to many topics in corporate finance. It is mostly well written and easy to understand if you are familiar with the topics already. The book offers many valuable bits of knowledge and I learned many things from it.

My main complaint with this book, however, and the reason I have only rated it at 3 stars, is its emphasis and almost blind belief in the Efficient Market Hypothesis and the derived theories such as the Capital Asset Pricing Model. This belief influences many parts of the book, but the assumption that stock markets have a superior intelligence in the aggregate is clearly a fallacy in my opinion and experience, because the stock markets often do exhibit 'cascading' irrational behaviour.

Another book which may interest you is: Analysis for Financial Management by Robert Higgins, which is a shorter book that is perhaps also a little better at explaining many of the core concepts in corporate finance, although it naturally doesn't cover all the details of this much larger book.

PS: This review is for the 8th edition.

I like this book because it addresses the reader directly. It is extremely useful if corporate finance is not new to you . I had already read "Fundamentals of Corporate Finance" by the same authors which is more for the beginning finance student and that helped a lot with this book.

Pros:
1. Fun to read (read the footnotes - the authors have a great sense of humor)
2. Explains concepts extremely well
3. Great examples, index, and chapter quizzes

Cons:
1. No solutions manual (there are quiz solutions, just no solutions to supplemental material)
2. Part V, Chapter 17 uses uncommon terminology - unless you take the second semester Finance class don't worry about it. Your prof will address this...

Finance can be a difficult subject for some, and this book simply makes finance easier. The authors have a great sense of humor and their footnotes are either (1) funny, or (2) incredibly interesting. In any highly quantitative course you're going to have to read a short-ish chapter that takes a long time to complete - this book makes that "long time" enjoyable. This is my favorite college/university level book & when I talk to others who've read this I hear the similar praise..

If you want a job on Wall Street as a financial analyst, this is your first book. After working through this book, you can move on to more advanced texts. You will have a great basic foundation.

I am an MBA Grad and a finance professional. You need to have this clear: this book is probably the best out there as introduction to Corporate Finance. The main downside is the price.

This book covers a lot of topics and is pretty well explained. If you find this book difficult, most likely you will find all finance books for college or university level quite complex too. Remember: finance is not an easy topic and BMA have tried to make it as easy as possible for all of us. CFOs and top finance professional around the world get quite good compensation level because they managed to understand the complexities of the financial industry. If you want to develop a career in finance, this is probably the best book to get into your personal library. For study or down the road, you will come back to this book for general concepts and guidance. However, the book does not go deep into any topic, it is just a general level review of multiple topics in corporate finance. Of course, if you decide to specialize in valuation, risk management, derivatives, project finance, etc; you will most likely purchase other books or even decide to go and read the research papers directly (although the majority of us wont because they are usually too complex, mathematical and just not time-efficient).

If you are business person and want a book at a very simple level (like a manual) to understand finance to run your business, this is not the book for you. This is a basic book for a person that will be going into finance as a profession and needs an introduction to different material. And believe me, it will be very useful even if you decide to take that derivatives class in a business school.

How does the BMA (Brealey, Myers, Allen) compare with older version (where it was BM only)? Well in my opinion its a big difference. The authors, especially Franklin Allen, have dedicated the last years to substantially improve the content of the book and update a lot of the material. They still have room to go but have done a great job and this is probably the best book out there in finance.

The critic about finance in the light of the last economic crises is usually misguided. Most of the finance concepts (specially the ones covered in this book) are quite sound and have always indicated that excesses can lead to bubbles and massive adjustments. Franklin Allen is an expert in this field and a critic of how the financial system developed in the last year. Bubbles have existed for hundreds of years and are not a new phonemena - and they have been well studied! I really hope Allen adds more analysis about the topic in the next edition.

Finally, if you have to consider multiple books out there, how should you think about buying this one? In my opinion this book has great content but is very expensive. But so are many of the other choices out there. I would recommend getting the last edition of this book if you are planning on a career in finance: it is only then whes it becomes a good value. Otherwise, just buy an older version that is cheaper or get an international edition if you can (and its legal).

A typical MBA book - very expensive and with very little substance. There is nothing in thi book that one cannot learn on his own by going to investopedia or other free sites. The book epitomizes the dumbing down of education and rigor. It is too glossy which raises the price. The book would be worth purchasing if it were sold for say $15. The style is extremely verbose - the authors seriously do not seem to value the readers time.

I purchased this book as it was required for a course. I found that the authors would present variables before explaining them, which would make understanding a bit confusing. I also found that their presentation of equations lacked good explanation. Having a background in mathematics I expected it to follow the standard premise, but it does not. I have ended up using lecture notes, materials from the publishers website and wikipedia to grasp the concepts.

I was a doctorate student in a public administration program years ago, taking corporate finance as an elective. This was perhaps the best textbook I read in that whole Ph.D. program. The authors really make the difficult topics easy to understand, with plentiful examples and cases. I am teaching a public finance course in a university now, finding myself using this book as reference often.

This book is waste of moeny. I am a MBA student and had to read this book for the course. There was not a single page of this book that was easy to read. I had to read other finance books at the end. It is inadequate and does not explain many important concepts in finance. It jumps into complicated issues without explaining the basics. It lacks defenition of terms. I have compared this to other finance books and found this very inadequate and difficult to understand.

Very helpful and wonderful customer service. Would recommend Jas8653 for any textbook and I know I will continue purchasing from Jas8653.