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Rating: 
Summary: A good book for a first insight in banks' financial analysis
Review: I bought this book 3 years ago, when I started by PhD. At that time I knew nothing about banks' financial statements analysis and the book consequently become as it says a "Guide", in my early steps in the topic. I still go back from time to time to re-read some issues. Thus, I would recommend the book to those interesting in getting a first insight into banks' financial analysis. They will find the first 14 chapters quite useful. Chapters 15-27 examine other issues, such as the environment, distressed banks in Asia, the rating industry among others. How useful the later can be highly depends on what the reader is looking for.
Rating: 
Summary: A Creditable Analysis
Review: Mr. Golin has written an easily readable and comprehensive guide to an obscure subject. He assumes only a general knowledge of finance and takes the user step-by-step through the analysis of a bank's financial statements, an approach that probably makes this book as useful to equity analysts as it should be to credit analysts of financial institutions. He has a rare perspective, that of an american lawyer (from Harvard Law School) who has grappled with investment analysis of corporations in south east Asia. As a result, many of the examples in the long section on distressed banks are drawn from the Asian economic crisis. Nevertheless the scope of the work is global. He deals with the continuing development of world-wide bank regulation and the role and function of rating agencies. Last, but not least, the appendices contain useful definitions and a good bibliography. For analysts of finanical institutions his book should be a 'strong buy'.
Rating: 
Summary: BEWARE
Review: The content of the Bank Credit Analysis Handbook is actually quite good. However, it is glaringly apparent that NO ONE proofread the manuscript. There are errors on almost every other page: missing punctuation (incuding periods), the same phrase back-to-back, incorrect formulas, formulas described one way, and then shown in a way nowhere close to the description. I have an MBA, and have read my share of textbooks and manuals, and I have NEVER come across one as sloppily edited as this one.The content of the book is good, but at $105 one would think someone would have proofread the manuscript before it was published.
Rating:
Summary: Timely Topic and Well Done
Review: This is an important book given the amount of risk banks have taken with exposure to Worldcom, Enron, Global Crossing and others. It is difficult to assess off balance sheet risk taken as structural risk or as total return swaps or credit derivatives. For more on off-balance sheet risk, one should also read "Credit Derivatives and Synthetic Structures".
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