Risks are everywhere in the business world. "Mastering Risk Modelling" provides the busy financial manager with useful tips andpractical templates for assessing, applying and modelling risk and uncertainty in Excel. The book is designed specifically to be of help to you if you don't have time to start from scratch - it will improve your abilities in Excel and give you a library of basic examples that you can use as a basis for further development.

It covers:

- Review of model design

- Risk and uncertainty

- Credit risk

- Project finance

- Financial analysis

- Valuation

- Options

- Bonds

- Equities

- Value at risk

- Simulation

This second edition contains brand new chapters:

- Revised models

- More material on credit risk modelling e.g. portfolios, bankruptcy models

- Shows dual 2003/2007 Excel key strokes

- More theory especially on statistics in Excel

- Basic statistics in Excel - tools and methods

- Capacity to borrow and repay

- Finding optimum mix of risk and return

- Fixed income risk models

- Visual Basic approach

In today's rapidly changing and increasingly complex business world, successful risk management is the key to survival and success. Business leaders are increasingly facing different kinds of risk, from those traditionally associated with the market- project risks, competitive risks, and currency risks, to a set of new, more hazardous threats. Businesses in the Twenty-First century face a range of global risks. These are having an increasingly large impact on the activities of individual firms. While ten or fifteen years ago, risks flowing from civil unrest, climate change, terrorism or pandemics had a very limited effect on business, this is no longer the case. Risks beyond the control of the firm affect businesses more than ever before. Risk is the business of business, and the fundamental job of executives is to anticipate change and manage it on the basis of an opinion about the future. Those who don't take and manage risks properly lose ground and are eventually driven out.

Interpreting Company Reports and Accounts guides the reader through the conventions and complexities of company accounts, explaining how to assess the financial and trading position of a company from year to year, how to spot undue risk taking and ‘‘cosmetic accounting’’ and where to look for clues on the quality of management. 

Packed with interesting real world examples, this is a highly practical book which shows readers how to analyse company reports and accounts, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The analysis is illustrated with over 200 extracts/examples from published accounts

This book offers a comprehensive, easy to understand guide for startup entities and developing companies, providing insight on the various sources of funding that are available, how these funding sources are useful at each stage of a company's development, and offers a comprehensive intellectual property strategy that parallels each stage of development. The IP strategies offered in this book take into consideration the goals that most startups and companies have at each stage of development, as well as the limitations that exist at each stage (i.e., limited available resources earmarked for intellectual property asset development), and provides solutions that startups and companies can implement to maximize their return on intellectual property investments. This book also includes a number of descriptive examples, case studies and scenarios to illustrate the topics discussed, and is intended for use by startups and companies across all industries. Readers will garner an appreciation for the value that intellectual property rights provide to a startup entity or company and will gain an understanding of the types of intellectual property rights that are available to companies and how to procure, utilize and monetize those intellectual property rights to help their company grow.

The ideal bank or treasury department has a maximum return from effective balance sheet planning through the management of assets and liabilities. Due to the scale of treasury operations and stricter internal and external controls, this management has become increasingly complex. This comprehensive text will therefore serve to guide the financial aspects of asset/liability management such as requirement for capital adequacy through to discussion of duration and gap management. The text is aimed at those involved in plotting long term strategy for major institutions and will provide an invaluable reference source for Chairman, Chief Executives and those involved in portfolio management and the implementation of management information systems. Contributions are from major institutions involved in ALCO work and include; Price Waterhouse, Abbey National, Bank of England, Chase Manhattan, First Chicago and Smith New Court.

We are all faced with projects going off the rails, veering far from what we initially set out to do, costing ten times as much and taking far too long to complete - this is just part of everyday working life. Honing our general skills in project management seems like the obvious answer, but Fast Projects promises a quicker and easier solution - cutting the time to get projects done in the first place. Learning to operate within a short schedule not only cuts costs and improves revenue and cash flow, but it also sets you aside as a sharper and slicker operation. How to build, shorten and execute a realistic plan in the shortest time possible is covered in detail along with a specific focus on ensuring you have clearly defined goals and are making accurate project predictions with a successful tracking progress. Using worked examples and tried and tested techniques, Fast Projects is your practical guide to ensuring projects not only succeed, but are delivered early. If you want to get the most out of your team and take control of your workload, resources and time, this book is for you.

Comprehensive and edited by leading names, this book takes a critical and discursive approach to the various forms and contexts of fundraising. Fundraising is a maturing profession, but one that is becoming increasingly controversial. Media reports of poor practice have contributed to concerns about the integrity of fundraisers and the uses which have been made of the resources they raise. As a result, a consensus now exists among senior figures in the industry about the changes that are required. Technique is no longer enough. Many more of the next generation of practitioners must be capable of considered reflection, organizational and inter-organizational strategic thinking and value-based leadership. Exploring new developments taking place in the area of fundraising, the specially commissioned articles, by experts in the field move the thinking in the profession beyond its familiar formulae and assumptions, opening up critical debate about the nature, contribution and limitations of fundraising. This volume is essential reading for anyone who aspires to work at senior levels in fundraising or is currently engaged in studying this challenging area.

Expected utility provides simple, testable properties of the optimum behavior that should be displayed by risk-averse individuals in risky decisions. Simultaneously, given the existence of paradoxes under the expected utility paradigm, expected utility can only be regarded as an approximation of actual behavior. A more realistic model is needed. This is particularly true when treating attitudes toward small probability events: the standard situation for insurable risks. Non-Expected Utility and Risk Management examines whether the existing results in insurance economics are robust to more general models of behavior under risk.

Local governments are hard-pressed to balance their budgets in the 1990s. Part of any budget-balancing effort is accurate forecasting. In this new work, Howard Frank introduces time-tested forecasting techniques from the private sector and military in a local forecasting environment. In a lucid, user-friendly treatment, Frank shows how simple and complex methods can be put to use in the contemporary local government setting. Through examples--many of them from his own research--the author delineates the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative and non-quantitative forecasting methods. Frank also shows how these techniques can be used to monitor changes in public programs--an increasingly important part of contemporary budget execution.

Frank does not assume an extensive mathematical or statistical background on the part of the reader--indeed, a forecast neophyte will have no difficulty understanding the text. Questions at the end of each chapter focus the reader on the major concepts and provide insights on practical applications within the urban setting. A cornerstone of the work is that local forecasters must be intelligent experimenters with the new tools--there is no canned advice that applies to all cities and forecast situations. But with application of forecasting approaches treated in this unique work, local budgeters--and those in training to become budgeters--will be able to adopt forecasting approaches that have been underutilized in local government.

In the knowledge economy, the value of corporations is directly related to their knowledge and intellectual capital. But broaden the perspective a little wider and you begin to see the possibilities: Think of cities, regions, even entire nations, in addition to the public sector. If intangibles and intellectual capital are important to the private sector, they are also important to the productivity and competitiveness of the public sector, and so to communities and nations as a whole. In this book, Editors Ahmed Bounfour and Leif Edivinsson have brought together the best minds in intellectual capital throughout the world to focus on a new and fertile area of research: measuring and managing the intellectual capital of communities. This is a creative and cutting-edge area of research that has the potential to change how public sector planning and development is done. Once there is a clear way to identify where wealth is created in a given region/nation, this process has the potential to reveal a huge knowledge repository in the public sector with a significant but idle potential for collective wealth creation the wealth of nations in waiting.

As stakeholder relationships and business in general have become increasingly central to the unfolding of stakeholder thinking, important new topics have begun to take centre stage in both the worlds of practitioners and academics. The role of project management becomes immeasurably more challenging, when stakeholders are no longer seen as simple objects of managerial action but rather as subjects with their own objectives and purposes. This book will aim to explain some of the complexities of project management and managerial relationships with stakeholders by discussing the practice of stakeholder engagement, dialog, measurement and management and the consequences of this practice for reporting and productivity, and performance within project management.

Purchasing and Financial Management of Information Technology aims to significantly reduce the amount of money wasted on IT by providing readers with a comprehensive guide to all aspects of planning, managing and controlling IT purchasing and finance. Starting from a recognition that IT purchasing and the financial management often needs to be treated differently from other types of expenditure, the author draws on over 25 years of experience in the field to provide readers with useful mixture of good procedures and common sense rules that have been tried, tested and found to work. Many of these are illustrated by case histories, each with a moral or a lesson. Purchasing and Financial Management of Information Technology provides useful guidelines and advice on whole range of topics including: * IT acquisitions policy * Dealing with suppliers * Budgeting and cost control * IT cost and risk management * Specification, selection and evaluation of systems * IT value for money

Organization development practitioners have, for over half a century, engaged with organizations to help them grow and thrive. The artful application of Organization Development (OD) has helped business leaders articulate vision, rethink business processes, create more fluid organization structures and better utilize people's talents. While business leaders and OD practitioners intuitively believe that OD provides valuable results, rigorous measurement of the value delivered has long eluded many OD practitioners.
'Bottom-Line Organization Development' provides powerful tools to capture and measure the financial return on investment (ROI) of OD projects to the business. Given the increasing competition for budget and resources within organizations and the requirements of demonstrating tangible results, the need for such OD measurement tools is very high.
But in addition to proving the value of OD projects, integrating evaluation into the change management process itself can actually increase the value of the change initiative because it opens up new ways of capturing and increasing the value of change initiatives. In other words, there is an ROI to ROI. Merrill Anderson calls this new way of approaching OD "strategic change valuation."
The book explains the five steps in the OD value process - diagnosis, design, deployment, evaluation and reflection. In addition, three case studies take readers through the process of applying bottom-line OD to three types of popular strategic change initiatives: executive coaching, organization capability, and knowledge management. Readers will gain a holistic perspective of how to make the seemingly intangible benefits of these initiativestangible.
* Guides you through a proven, results-based approach to calculating the Return on Investment for large-scale, complex change management initiatives
* Provides the tools to identify the key measures and specific advice on how to measure them effectively
* Summarizes in simple language everything HR professionals need to do to justify and document the ROI of organization development initiatives for senior management

In recent years developments in information and communication technology, along with globalisation and trade liberalisation, have brought about a revolution in the capital markets. Always highly sensitive to global corporate trends, the asset management industry has been subject to huge changes in recent years.

This book discusses the changing nature of asset management and the implications for investors. It is based on extensive research and interviews with a large number of distinguished practitioners in the industry.

The issue of how technology has impacted on asset management is discussed and how, with the growth of the industry, more individuals are exercising control over their investments than ever before. Insightful and comprehensive, this book is a must for anyone involved in the management of money.

Professor Lewis is to be congratulated upon being among the first economists to tackle the tricky subject of controlling the nationalised industries."Financial Times This book analyses some of the difficulties of costing and price formation that arise out of the existence of overhead costs in nationalised industry. Issues such as the law relating to monopoly and the accountability of public enterprise are considered, along with complex questions such as price formation and the problem of policy in public corporations.

A resource for administrators seeking innovative ideas and supporting precedents in formulating policy, this book also provides a useful textbook for public administration and policy students. It employs a wealth of case studies in budgeting and financial management to demonstrate strategies in system implementation, policy formulation, government accounting, auditing, and financial reporting. With contributions from leading experts, it clarifies procedures to solve cutback and downsizing dilemmas using theoretical models, and provides pragmatic approaches to managing financial activities under budgetary strain. It also covers the evolution of a debt management policy.

"The complexity of business in economically demanding times makes finding constructive angels that much more challenging. The advice and tips in Attracting Capital from Angels are, therefore, invaluable. The wisdom offered here is not just for start-ups or neophytes, but is a well-timed companion to already existing resources and approaches to helping a business in all phases of development. It’s also a great manual for people who want to share their knowledge (and invest capital) as an angel. I plan to recommend Attracting Capital from Angels to every entrepreneur I run into in the future who asks for mentoring sources. Great job!" (Bob Bozeman, General Partner, Angel Investors, LP)

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN

This book offers all the information entrepreneurs need for finding elusive angel investors. Comprehensive, eminently readable, and based on the authors’ years of experience dealing with venture capital firms, angels, and entrepreneurs, this book covers all the angles on angels:

• What are angels and what do they want?
• Different types of angels
• Pitching and preparing for angels
• Finding angels
• Working with angels
• The future of angel investing

Attracting Capital from Angels is the ultimate guide to finding the money your business needs to get on its feet–and make a run at success.

Thorough, accessible coverage of the key issues in XVA XVA Credit, Funding and Capital Valuation Adjustments provides specialists and non-specialists alike with an up-to-date and comprehensive treatment of Credit, Debit, Funding, Capital and Margin Valuation Adjustment (CVA, DVA, FVA, KVA and MVA), including modelling frameworks as well as broader IT engineering challenges. Written by an industry expert, this book navigates you through the complexities of XVA, discussing in detail the very latest developments in valuation adjustments including the impact of regulatory capital and margin requirements arising from CCPs and bilateral initial margin. The book presents a unified approach to modelling valuation adjustments including credit risk, funding and regulatory effects. The practical implementation of XVA models using Monte Carlo techniques is also central to the book. You'll also find thorough coverage of how XVA sensitivities can be accurately measured, the technological challenges presented by XVA, the use of grid computing on CPU and GPU platforms, the management of data, and how the regulatory framework introduced under Basel III presents massive implications for the finance industry. * Explores how XVA models have developed in the aftermath of the credit crisis * The only text to focus on the XVA adjustments rather than the broader topic of counterparty risk. * Covers regulatory change since the credit crisis including Basel III and the impact regulation has had on the pricing of derivatives. * Covers the very latest valuation adjustments, KVA and MVA. * The author is a regular speaker and trainer at industry events, including WBS training, Marcus Evans, ICBI, Infoline and RISK If you're a quantitative analyst, trader, banking manager, risk manager, finance and audit professional, academic or student looking to expand your knowledge of XVA, this book has you covered.

This eighth volume in the series covers a variety of topics in financial planning and forecasting, including: the change in earnings response coefficient around dividend omissions; estimating spin-off values; and, forbearance, deposit insurance, and the market value of savings and loan associations.

Managing Risk in Organizations offers a proven framework for handling risks across all types of organizations. In this comprehensive resource, David Frame— a leading expert in risk management— examines the risks routinely encountered in business, offers prescriptions to assess the effects of various risks, and shows how to develop effective strategies to cope with risks. In addition, the book is filled with practical tools and techniques used by professional risk practitioners that can be readily applied by project managers, financial managers, and any manager or consultant who deals with risk within an organization. Managing Risk in Organizations is filled with illustrative case studies and

• Outlines the various types of riskpure, operational, project, technical, business, and political
• Reveals what risk management can and cannot accomplish
• Shows how to organize risk management efforts to conduct risk assessments, manage crises, and recover from disasters
• Includes a systematic risk management processrisk management planning, risk identification, qualitative impact analysis, quantitative impact analysis, risk response planning, and monitoring control
• Provides quantitative and qualitative tools to identify and handle risks

This book focuses on microeconomic foundations of capital structure theory. It combines theoretical results with a large number of examples, exercises and applications. The book examines fundamental ideas in capital structure management, some of which are still not very well understood in the business community, such as Modigliani and Miller's irrelevance result, trade-off theory, pecking-order theory, asset substitution, credit rationing and debt overhang. Chapters also cover capital structure issues that have become very important following the recent financial crisis. Miglo discusses the ways in which financial economists were forced to look critically at capital structure, as the problems faced by many companies stemmed from their financing policies following the crisis. The book also discusses links between capital structure and firm's performance, corporate governance, firm's strategy and flexibility, and covers such topics as life cycle approach to capital structure management, capital structure of small and start-up companies, corporate financing versus project financing and examples of optimal capital structure analyses for different companies. This comprehensive guide to capital structure theory will be of interest to all students, academics and practitioners seeking to understand this fast-developing and critical area of business management.

Unique in its approach, 'Money Matters for Hospitality Managers' is unlike other heavy theoretical accounting texts, using real life scenarios to show managers how it's done. Backed up by a range of exercises and activities, it thus allows managers to put their learning straight into practice - and so to achieve immediate results! 'Money Matters' will actively help managers and employees in the industry to: * learn more about the control aspects in order to become more effective in their work * learn about the business and companies in the wider context * understand where their section of the organization fits in the 'bigger picture' * increase their knowledge and enhance career opportunities Covering an unprecedented range of sectors (including hotels, restaurants, contract catering, leisure tourism, cruise ships and theme parks), the book supplies useful advice for the whole hospitality industry. It is ideal for operational and first line management, for whom it provides a welcome, accessible and hands-on introduction to finance and accounting in their sector.

'Delivering Business Value from IT' is focused on the evaluation issue in IT and how IT evaluation can proceed across the life-cycle of any IT investment and be linked positively to improving business performance.
Chapters 1,2 and 3 detail an approach to IT evaluation whilst chapters 4 and 5 build on these by showing two distinctive approaches to linking IT to business performance. The remaining three chapters deal with a range of evaluation issues emerging as important - specifically Internet evaluation, Y2K and beyond, EMU, quality outsourcing, infrastructure, role of benchmarking, and cost of ownership issues that practitioners regularly encounter.
A 'Computer Weekly' Professional Series book
Contains high visibility case studies including Safeway, Unipart, Hewlett Packard, Morgan Stanley, CNN, BP Exploration, British Aerospace, and Royal and Sun Alliance.