Financial Statement Analysis. A Practitioner's Guide

Praise for Financial Statement Analysis FOURTH EDITION «I love this book. It helps to develop the questioning mind—the mind of a financial detective. It teaches the art of skepticism and critical thinking. Readers go beyond definition and calculation and learn interpretation.» —Philip L. Cooley, PhD, Prassel Distinguished Professor of Business, Trinity University «Over my decades of involvement with high-yield bonds, Marty Fridson has been the leading speaker of truth. As he so accurately states in Financial Statement Analysis, the credit investor is required to engage in a game of cat-and-mouse with company management's intent on minimizing their cost of capital by putting a positive gloss on their financial statements. The Fourth Edition of Marty's terrific book is the bible on how to detect and deal with these efforts.» —Howard Marks, Chairman, Oaktree Capital Management «Financial Statement Analysis is a unique text; it combines great academic work with numerous real-life examples to form a highly useful reference for equity investors, debt holders, and investors who straddle both asset classes. Whether you are an investor, an investment advisor, or a teacher, Financial Statement Analysis will prove very valuable.» —Margaret M. Cannella, former head of Global Credit Research, J.P. Morgan and Adjunct Professor, Columbia Business School «Marty has seen it all! He has had a front-row seat to see the birth, death, and rebirth of the high-yield bond market . . . several times over! In the Fourth Edition of Financial Statement Analysis, Marty clearly demonstrates that despite the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002, and other attempts to curtail abuse of the system, one needs a critical analytical eye to be certain that management is not trying to obfuscate the truth. The case studies provide excellent and timely examples of some of the techniques that companies have used to mislead investors.» —Edward Z. Emmer, former global head of Corporate and Government Ratings and Equity Research, Standard & Poor's «Those who read financial statements without understanding the strategic context in which they are written will land on the losing end of the gripping episodes with which bond-market legend Marty Fridson illustrates in the Fourth Edition of his classic reference, Financial Statement Analysis. And all of us who depend on the markets sending capital to its best use should hope that investors read this book first.» —David Musto, Professor of Finance, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania «This book rightly urges resolute skepticism when inspecting financial statements. Its great value, though, is in the plain-spoken stripping down of real-world and illustrative examples that show how to see past the numbers to the practicalities and incentives behind them—and so help analysts and journalists alike ask the right questions.» —Richard Beales, Assistant Editor, Reuters Breakingviews