Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Introduction to the Subject, in Some Parts too Brief, December 13, 2004
The book "Multinational Financial Management" is a good introduction to this rather complex subject. It is written well and contains a lot of examples and historical references. Some of the chapters in the second part are kept a tad too short though.
The book covers the main topics of international financial management, the environment of international financial management, foreign exchange and derivatives market and risk management, financing of multinational corporations, foreign investment analysis and multinational working capital management in 5 main sections.
I found most parts of the text to be very well readable and easy to understand. All concepts are backed up by examples and separate illustrations discussing a real event in more or less detail. This works especially well in the first chapters of the text covering the simpler concepts. Subjects like international monetary systems or country risk analysis (to just mention a few) are covered in great detail, and the required math, e.g. the formulas used for the parity conditions and the Fisher Effect, are illustrated with enough examples even for someone with little or no mathematical background.
The parts of the book covering derivatives is too short and the theory provided does not go deep enough in order to comprehend the more complex examples easily. Trying to figure out the mechanics of Kodak's Zero Coupon Australian Dollar Interest Rate/Currency Swap involving 11 parties, multiple swaps and currencies was no easy task after a mere 2 1/2 page theoretical introduction to currency swaps. There are better books for understanding currency swaps.
Other parts not covered deep enough were the chapters on international project and firm evaluation (covering subject like WACC and CAPM). With just this book, it is impossible to get an idea of the real meaning of these models and techniques. Too many details are omitted that should have been covered. Granted, these are more complex subjects, but maybe the author should have either keep the book focused on the main topics or split the content over two books.
Overall, the first part of the book is very useful, but the more complex subjects are not covered with the depth they require.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It does not get any better than this, December 1, 2003
This is a comprehensive and masterfully written book; all MBA students and anybody doing business in or curious about the global economy will benefit from reading this work. All the fundamental principles of the field are clearly described and extensive real-world examples and case studies are given in which principles are synthesized and analyzed to create a very understandable and thorough learning framework. The result is one of the best textbooks I have ever read. The complex subjects of exchange rates, international monetary system, currency forecasting, country risk, foreign exchange rates, currency futures and options, swaps and interest rate derivatives, translation and transaction exposure, measuring and managing economic exposure, corporate strategy and capital budgeting for the multinational corporation, and more are covered.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sometimes Wordy, August 21, 2005
This is one of the better books for a course in international finance. It has cases in the text, which allows the student to get the real world intuition of the topics that are being covered. This is not a text that only extends capital budgeting to an international setting, it also includes some concepts borrowed from international economics (e.g. purchasing power parity, interest rate parity, covered interest arbitrage, etc.). It also looks into some risk management practices that are relevant for multinational corporations. However, I feel that some topics could have been cut short and the author just wanted to add a few (hundred) more pages to the text.
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