Due Diligence Techniques and Analysis

Rating:
Summary: An excellent guide to truly understanding the numbers
Review: As someone who works in investment banking, I can say this book is applicable to much more than just due diligence. It can help an analyst through most financial analysis situations(assuming the user knows the basics of how to use and analyze financial statements). What's best about the book is that it goes beyond the theory and academic stuff and gets down to real "how-to's" and "why's". He goes through every account that would appear on the three major financial statements and explains what to look for in them, how to find the answer if it's not readily apparent, what questions to ask and why the questions are important. He also thoroughly examines off-balance sheet, off-income statement and qualitative items that are essential to analysis. Beware, there are no numbers or examples to work through in this book. This book is quite literally one man's experience and intuition put into written form. If you understand that financial analysis is not as cut-and-dry as looking at well-prepared, fully forthcoming financial statements with all the info you need already given, then this book is just what you are looking for. It helps you get the right numbers to which you can apply meaningful financial analysis.

Rating:
Summary: Very comprehensive
Review: The book uncovers a huge amount of detailed questions, nedded to perform a solid due dilligence. Very good for inspiration before investigating.