This book deals directly with the risk/return multiple trade-offs coming out of the closely intertwined relationship between banking and real estate. The authors explore how banks could embrace a more proactive approach to make the most of their, mostly ‘long only’, exposure to real estate, and create positive spillover effects on their real estate counterparts and the sector as a whole. It provides a "state of the art" representation and analysis of the strategies that best practices in banking are adopting to manage these issues and plan for a new set of interrelations, driving a "virtuous circle" as opposed to the current one. Banking, Lending and Real Estate is built on the academic knowhow and professional expertise of the authors, who have been researching, writing and working on this joint topic for over a decade. With its pragmatic approach, it allows the reader to capture which leading hedge active and holistic approaches are available today and proven to treat, for example, the banks’ overexposure to this asset class; to manage "unlikely to pay" and sub-performing positions; and to optimize the recovery value coming from the work out of real estate related NPL (and underlying assets). Case studies and relevant examples are provided, leveraging on the authors’ experience in consulting projects in the EMEA region and from working with global, regional and domestic banks and the real estate players acting across its value chain. This book will appeal to both academics and business practitioners within the banking, financial services and real estate sectors, as well as professionals from financial and strategic/industrial advisory working in those fields.

In an era of rapid and extensive economic reform, what is the appropriate role for fiscal policy? Is there a residual role of government after socialism and dirigisme? Following Macroeconomic Dimensions of Public Finance, this is the second volume of essays in honour of Vito Tanzi. It focuses on the importance of fiscal policy on the wholesale economic reforms that are sweeping the advanced, less developed and formerly communist countries. Issues analysed include: the role of fiscal and budgetary policies in the process of reform; the impact of privatization on the exchequer and the dilemmas for social policy in times of fiscal austerity; the paradox of post-socialism and post-dirigisme that an efficient and harmonic move to a decontrolled, liberal market economy involves active state intervention; and the methodological aspects relating to the proper assessment of selected fiscal policy mechanisms. This collection of essays will contribute to understanding the channels and transmission mechanisms of fiscal policies in the context of major economic reforms.

The urban waterfront is regarded as the frontier of contemporary urban development, easily attracting funding and drawing publicity. "City, Capital and Water" provides a detailed account of the redevelopment of urban waterfronts in major cities around the world including: London, Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka, Hong Kong, Sydney, Toronto, Dublin and Amsterdam. The range and depth of the case studies allow for an overview of the entire process--preliminary planning, approaches to financing, partnership agreements, and state sponsorship--and a discussion of the specifics of each case. Recent trends in urban waterfront redevelopment are discussed and analyzed, particularly the marginalization of planning, the effects of deregulation, economic globalization, and the manipulation of development processes by property and political interests.

The Chartered Mercantile Bank is one of the constituent banks of the huge Hongkong and Shanghai bank. This study charts its first 40 years as one of the pioneering banks of the Far East. The Chartered Mercantile became the leading exchange bank in India and South East Asia whilst always retaining its head office in the pivotal London market. Based upon meticulous research using a particularly rich set of banking archives, the book describes the complex political and financial circumstances on the subcontinent during the bank's early years and introduces the personalities in the Indian business and London banking worlds who guided the infant institution. The volatility of local markets is analysed, with portraits of the banks and merchant houses which did not survive the many financial crises in the East also included. This book will do much to remedy the lack of existing research into international finance, and Eastern banking in particular, in the 19th century. It provides an inside view of the workings of an Eastern bank - the nature of its business, methods of payment and exchange, recruitment and career patterns of staff, and includes valuable new material on the role of European bankers in an eastern setting.

'A shocking, enraging, sometimes hilarious exposé of a tax system that lives down to all our worst fears of further enriching the wealthy at the expense of the little guys.' - Piers Morgan 'Very funny (and furious)... By the end of the book you may be spluttering with rage at the injustice of it all. Page after page shows how the rich are exploiting loopholes to reduce their tax bill.... But this is not some crazed figure on the extreme left hoping to bring down the establishment. The book is written by an accountant who has spent his career coming up with the very tax avoidance schemes the super-wealthy use to evade the clutches of HMRC.' - The Telegraph 'Funny, clever and really quite brilliant. Taxtopia will make you furiously angry and possibly even filthy rich.' - Tom Peck, The Independent 'If you want to know how skewed the system is and how the rich always get richer and stay that way, while you don't, then read this book. Then get angry.' - Patrick Alley, Co-founder of Global Witness and author of Very Bad People 'Taxtopia's anonymous author has done the impossible - created a hilarious and deeply troubling expose about how the world's shady tax system is exploited and proves what we always suspected - that our tax system is rigged against us. Read it and weep.' - Geraint Anderson author of City Boy 'Would I recommend the book? For readers of Spear's, my answer is 'yes, and it may also be worth going back over some of the more interesting ideas with your accountant' -Spear's In TAXTOPIA a rogue accountant breaks ranks to share his journey from clueless naïf to skilled tax consultant -and in doing so blows the lid on the murky world of making the tax burdens of the ultra-wealthy disappear. In the topsy-turvy world of tax avoidance, you can get richer by buying a yacht, the world's biggest exporter of coffee is Switzerland, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump and the Duke of Westminster often pay less tax than you do. Written with sharp wit and over-brimming with inside secrets, the anonymous author shows us that not only does the global tax system encourage dubious practice which favours the rich, but that it was specifically founded with that in mind. If you suspect that tax is a rigged game, a con, designed to fleece the little guy, you are about to find out just how shockingly true that really is. Welcome to TAXTOPIA.

Written in an accessible style from a consumer perspective and blends academic research with professional insights. Deals with all essential aspects of financial services that affect consumers and how they can exploit opportunities. Each of the chapters contain a list of learning objectives; a range of scenarios, case studies, examples and articles to provide a "real world" context to the discussion; a key points summary with referencing and further reading and useful on-line resources, as well as, a selection of short self-review questions. Enables readers to understand how the operations, complexity and dynamism of an ever-changing financial services industry shape the financial opportunities and risks they face.

The variability of valuation practice within Europe is perceived as a problem within the globalization of property. This edited textbook examines the practice of real estate valuation in selected countries in Europe. The focus is on countries with well developed real estate markets in which both international and indigenous investors are active. The book is aimed at real estate professionals, financiers, institutional advisers, property researchers and students who require a greater understanding of comparative property appraisal techniques applied across Europe.

In this thorough and enlightening book, the authors examine the role of law in developing the large financial markets necessary for national economic success. They discuss the basic foundational law of contracts, property and tort, corporate law, and securities law, providing both a broad theoretical and empirical case for its value in financial markets. The book begins with an historical analysis of the law's development, reviewing the legal governance of corporate finance with an emphasis on the development of US securities law in the twentieth century. Also provided is an extensive empirical analysis of the law's effect. A unique benefit of the book is its integration of all the relevant aspects, rather than examining them in isolation. Chapters cover the role of law in corporate finance, behavioral and empirical analyses, as well as current controversies in law and corporate finance. Ultimately, the book is a defense of the economic value of the law in the United States and throughout the world. Students and scholars of business and law will find much of interest in the authors' comprehensive study of the rule of law in today's financial markets.

Advice and words of wisdom from the greatest American businessman and philanthropist. John D. Rockefeller is considered to be the wealthiest man to have ever lived, after adjusting for inflation. An American businessman who made his wealth as a cofounder and leading figure of the Standard Oil Company, he also had a pivotal role in creating our modern system of philanthropy. Collected in John D. Rockefeller on Making Money are the words from the man himself, offering advice on how to successfully start and manage a booming business, as well as the most efficient ways to preserve your wealth once you have acquired it. These quotes also cover: Happiness in the face of great wealth Money and its effects Thoughts on facing public criticism Thoughts on big business in the USA Included are John D. Rockefeller's thoughts on the most sage and conscientious manner of distributing and sharing your wealth when your wealth is overflowing. Finally, we get a glimpse into Rockefeller's life with the inclusion of some of his most personal correspondence.

Contemporary financial markets have been characterized by sociocultural phenomena such as "meme stocks", the Gamestop short squeeze, and "You Only Live Once (YOLO) trading". These are movements led by small-scale retail investors banding together to participate forcefully in financial markets through decentralized but coordinated actions. This book deploys many different subdisciplines to explore the recent ‘power grabbing’ of retail investors and the online environment that enables them to join the ranks of major financial players, and participate in contemporary capitalism. It offers multiple perspectives on the genesis, role, motivations, power, and future prospects of retail investors as a force in contemporary financial markets. Drawing upon the insights of authors hailing from many different countries, the book frames YOLO capitalism through numerous angles that help to explain the context and the importance of activist retail investors in modern financial markets, and thereby explore the possibilities of a transformed financial future with much wider small-scale participation. The book assesses the potential of online - and other - communities in enabling global coordination in impacting or even driving financial and crypto markets, and the challenges that come with it and weighs the competing narratives both positive and negative regarding YOLO capitalism. It strikes a balanced assessment of their legal, cultural, behavioural, economic, and political roles in modern finance. This book will be of interest to a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary audience of scholars in financial markets, financial regulation, political economy, public administration, macroeconomics, corporate governance, and the philosophy and the sociology of finance.

Over the past several years, the field of international investing has been transformed by a host of new, state-of-the-art techniques. "Quantitative Investing for the Global Markets" is the definitive handbook for money and portfolio managers, research analysts, pension consultants, corporate treasurers, and other professionals seeking a competitive edge in the global investment marketplace. Topics include: international asset allocation; optimum diversification levels; style analysis and evaluation; market neutral strategies; global stock valuation; advanced strategies for hedging currency risk; international benchmarking; etc.

Examining various methods of debt management used in the US., Handbook of Debt Management, provides a comprehensive analysis of securities offered for sale by municipalities, states, and the federal government. The book covers laws regarding municipal bonds, the economic choice between debt and taxes and the tax-exempt status of municipal bond owners, capital budgeting, including state and local government practices, developing governmental and intergovernmental debt policies, pay-as-you-go with debt financing for capital projects, US Internal Revenue Service regulations on arbitrage in state and local government debt proceeds investment, US treasury auctions, and more.

A History Today Book of the Year A world-renowned astronomer and an esteemed science writer make the provocative argument for space exploration without astronauts. Human journeys into space fill us with wonder. But the thrill of space travel for astronauts comes at enormous expense and is fraught with peril. As our robot explorers grow more competent, governments and corporations must ask, does our desire to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars justify the cost and danger? Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees believe that beyond low-Earth orbit, space exploration should proceed without humans. In The End of Astronauts, Goldsmith and Rees weigh the benefits and risks of human exploration across the solar system. In space humans require air, food, and water, along with protection from potentially deadly radiation and high-energy particles, at a cost of more than ten times that of robotic exploration. Meanwhile, automated explorers have demonstrated the ability to investigate planetary surfaces efficiently and effectively, operating autonomously or under direction from Earth. Although Goldsmith and Rees are alert to the limits of artificial intelligence, they know that our robots steadily improve, while our bodies do not. Today a robot cannot equal a geologist's expertise, but by the time we land a geologist on Mars, this advantage will diminish significantly. Decades of research and experience, together with interviews with scientific authorities and former astronauts, offer convincing arguments that robots represent the future of space exploration. The End of Astronauts also examines how spacefaring AI might be regulated as corporations race to privatize the stars. We may eventually decide that humans belong in space despite the dangers and expense, but their paths will follow routes set by robots.

Stochastic Finance provides an introduction to mathematical finance that is unparalleled in its accessibility. Through classroom testing, the authors have identified common pain points for students, and their approach takes great care to help the reader to overcome these difficulties and to foster understanding where comparable texts often do not. Written for advanced undergraduate students, and making use of numerous detailed examples to illustrate key concepts, this text provides all the mathematical foundations necessary to model transactions in the world of finance. A first course in probability is the only necessary background. The book begins with the discrete binomial model and the finite market model, followed by the continuous Black-Scholes model. It studies the pricing of European options by combining financial concepts such as arbitrage and self-financing trading strategies with probabilistic tools such as sigma algebras, martingales and stochastic integration. All these concepts are introduced in a relaxed and user-friendly fashion.

The Pyramid of Lies by international financial journalist Duncan Mavin, is the true story of Lex Greensill, the Australian farmer who became a hi-flying billionaire banker before crashing back down to earth, exposing a tangled network of flawed financiers, politicians and industrialists. Lex Greensill had a simple, billion-dollar idea - democratising supply chain finance. Suppliers want to get their invoices paid as soon as possible. Companies want to hold off as long as they can. Greensill bridged the two, it's mundane, boring even, but he saw an opportunity to profit. However, margins are thin and Lex, ever the risk taker, made lucrative loans with other people's money: to a Russian cargo plane linked to Vladmir Putin, to former Special Forces who ran a private army, and crucially to companies that were fraudulent or had no revenue. When the company finally collapsed it exposed the revolving door between Westminster and big business and how David Cameron was allowed to lobby ministers for cash that would save Greensill's doomed business. Instead, Credit Suisse and Japan's SoftBank are nursing billions of dollars in losses, a German bank is under criminal investigation, and thousands of jobs are at risk. What Bad Blood did for Silicon Valley and The Smartest Guys in the Room did for Wall Street, The Pyramid of Lies will do for the world of shadow banking and supply chain finance. It is a world populated with some of the most outlandish characters in business and some of the most outrageous examples of excess. It is a story of greed and ambition that shines a light on the murky intersection between politics and business, where lavish fortunes can be made and lost.

Spending on M&A has, in aggregate, grown so fast that it has even overtaken capital expenditure on increasing and maintaining physical assets. Yet McKinsey, the leading management consultancy, reports that "Anyone who has researched merger success rates knows that roughly 70% fail". The idea that businesses might be using huge and increasing sums of shareholders' money for an activity that more often than not leads to failure calls into question the information on which M&A decisions are based. This book presents statistical studies, case material, and standard-setters' opinions on company accounting before, during, and after M&A. It documents the manipulation of annual accounts by acquirers ahead of share for share bids, biased forecasts of post-merger earnings by bidders, and devices to flatter earnings when recording the deal. It explores the challenges for standard-setters in regulating information flows during and after M&A, and for account-users wishing to learn from financial statements how a deal has affected performance. Drawing on a wide range of international examples, this readable book is targeted not just at accounting specialists but at anyone who is comfortable reading the serious financial press, is intrigued by what is going on in the massive M&A market, and is concerned with achieving better-informed M&A. As such it might be of particular interest to business executives, lawyers, bankers, and investors involved in M&A as well as graduate students interested in researching or learning about the role of accounting in M&A.

In most countries the economic structure and financial landscape are dominated by corporations. A critical examination of the various facets of the corporate economy is thus vitally important. In "Mangerial Finance in the Corporate Economy" the authors employ a dynamic theoretical apparatus and empirical evaluations to present such a study.
The book, divided into five sections, brings together new research on major issues such as mutual and pension funds and portfolio diversification; market volatility, credit availability; tax structure and dividend reinvestment plans; financial institutions; and corporate behavior in the context of the international economy. "Managerial Finance in the Corporate Economy" presents a comprehensive analysis of corporate culture within the international economy.

"The water "coming out of your kitchen tap is four billion years old and might well have been sipped by a "Tyrannosaurus rex." Rather than only three states of water--liquid, ice, and vapor--there is a fourth, "molecular water," fused into rock 400 miles deep in the Earth, and that's where most of the planet's water is found. Unlike most precious resources, water cannot be used up; it can always be made clean enough again to drink--indeed, water can be made so clean that it's toxic. Water is the most vital substance in our lives but also more amazing and mysterious than we appreciate. As Charles Fishman brings vibrantly to life in this surprising and mind-changing narrative, water runs our world in a host of awe-inspiring ways, yet we take it completely for granted. But the era of easy water is over.
Bringing readers on a lively and fascinating journey--from the wet moons of Saturn to the water-obsessed hotels of Las Vegas, where dolphins swim in the desert, and from a rice farm in the parched Australian outback to a high-tech IBM plant that makes an exotic breed of pure water found nowhere in nature--Fishman vividly shows that we've already left behind a century-long golden age when water was thoughtlessly abundant, free, and safe and entered a new era of high-stakes water. In 2008, Atlanta came within ninety days of running entirely out of clean water. California is in a desperate battle to hold off a water catastrophe. And in the last five years Australia nearly ran out of water--and had to scramble to reinvent the country's entire water system. But as dramatic as the challenges are, the deeper truth Fishman reveals is that there is no good reason for us to be overtaken by a global water crisis. We have more than enough water. We just don't think about it, or use it, smartly.
"The Big Thirst "brilliantly explores our strange and complex relationship to water. We delight in watching waves roll in from the ocean; we take great comfort from sliding into a hot bath; and we will pay a thousand times the price of tap water to drink our preferred brand of the bottled version. We love water--but at the moment, we don't appreciate it or respect it. Just as we've begun to reimagine our relationship to food, a change that is driving the growth of the organic and local food movements, we must also rethink how we approach and use water. The good news is that we can. As Fishman shows, a host of advances are under way, from the simplicity of harvesting rainwater to the brilliant innovations devised by companies such as IBM, GE, and Royal Caribbean that are making impressive breakthroughs in water productivity. Knowing what to do is not the problem. Ultimately, the hardest part is changing our water consciousness.
As Charles Fishman writes, "Many civilizations have been crippled or destroyed by an inability to understand water or manage it. We have a huge advantage over the generations of people who have come before us, because we can understand water and we can use it smartly." "The Big Thirst "will forever change the way we think about water, about our essential relationship to it, and about the creativity we can bring to ensuring that we'll always have plenty of it.

Finally, there's a money guide to help single women survive and thrive. Single Women and Money is a highly readable guide that helps single women live a financially secure and successful life. It's a book for the millions of unmarried women in America who must make ends meet on a single salary-which is typically less than what men earn. Using stories of actual women, as well as data and experts' insights, the book chronicles the financial issues of single women. It provides the tools needed to tackle their daily and longer-term needs and probes the issues specific to divorcees, widows, women who never married, and single mothers. Single women reveal their moving stories detailing how many have overcome obstacles. From there, the book provides a wide range of specific guidance on money issues targeted to singles. These include saving, spending wisely, managing with children, shedding debt, investing in line with your values, planning for retirement and long-term care, navigating Social Security, paying taxes, landing a job after age 55, protecting financial assets and leaving a legacy. Offering resources women can turn to in hard times, the authors also suggest ways society can, and should, assist single women.

A common theme running through both the market economies of Western Europe and the old command economies of Eastern Europe is the desire to combine local economic development objectives with those of the international investor. It is in this context that the interaction between planning systems and property markets is of paramount importance.

eBook available with sample pages: EB:0203362241

#1 Business Bestseller (Wall Street Journal, Amazon, USA Today) The Great Devaluation may be one of the most timely books ever written on the state of the global economy. Baratta sums it up simply enough with the following idea: "What seems crazy in normal times becomes necessary in a crisis." The Great Devaluation is the #1 bestselling book that explains why the real crisis facing the world today is not the Coronavirus. The real crisis facing the world is explosive government debt and deficits. Governments are now left with no choice but to spend more than they make, borrow more than they can ever repay, and devalue their currencies to cover it all up. Former Hollywood storyteller Adam Baratta brings monetary policy to life in this follow-up to his national bestseller, Gold Is A Better Way. You'll learn how and why Federal Reserve polices have facilitated an explosion in government debt and have systematically undermined the world financial system in the name of profit. The result? An out of control system where financial inequality has become a ticking time bomb set to blow up the global economy.