There is plenty of market lore about what influences a corporate acquisition’s probability of success. It took the authors of this book to produce a thorough, empirically supported answer to that question. Using a database of 40,000 transactions over a 40-year period, Lev and Gu identify a total of 43 factors that make an acquisition more likely to succeed or to fail. They provide a ten-factor model that is practical for investors to apply in assessing a given deal’s odds of beating the overall observed failure rate of 70%-75%. (That is twice the failure rate of internal projects reported by Wrike, Inc.)
Despite its quantitative rigor, The M&A Failure Trap is no dry recitation of statistics. The authors present their findings in colorful prose, not hesitating to point the finger at the parties and incentive arrangements they hold responsible for the appalling high failure rate. I especially like the case studies of both successful and unsuccessful transactions through which they depict the human element that helps to determine whether a a given succeeds or fails.
Imagine how beneficial it could be if corporate managers read and internalize Lev and Gu’s prescriptions. They could thereby vastly reduce the amount of wealth destruction inflicted by M&A deals that are all but doomed from the outset.
An essential read about M&A for executives and investors who make critical decisions when M&A events and opportunities happen.
In The M&A Failure Trap: Why Most Mergers and Acquisitions Fail and How the Few Succeed, a distinguished team of finance and accounting researchers and practitioners delivers a practical and up-to-date exploration of the shortcomings of managerial mergers and acquisitions decisions. In the book, you'll discover:
Why 70-75% of all corporate acquisitions fail
How to substantially improve acquisition decisions
How to predict a specific merger outcome
All the lessons and advice provided in this book are fact-based-derived from a sample of…
This is a book that was truly needed. Bitcoin is a controversial subject, with passions that run high on both sides. Unfortunately, the passions are rarely accompanied by productive discussion of the actual pros and cons. It fell to the philosophy professors who wrote this book to address fairly and frankly the arguments against the most famous cryptocurrency, even as they conclude that on balance we are better off living in a world with bitcoin than in one without it.
Readers who are skeptical about bitcoin’s usefulness, but willing to approach the matter with an open mind, will learn how it can serve the world’s billions of unbanked people. Others facing censorship and political oppression stand to gain some relief through the use of bitcoin. At the same time. Bailey, Rettler, and Warmke bring up objections that even the digital currency’s critics have probably not seen raised previously.
The authors do get into the weeds as they discuss technical aspects of the bitcoin system’s origins and operation. That should not deter anyone from getting a copy of Resistance Money to benefit from the most fact-based treatment available of a nearly $2 trillion asset that is has made considerable inroads into the financial mainstream.
Bitcoin isn't just for criminals, speculators, or wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneurs - despite what the headlines say. In an imperfect world of rampant inflation, creeping authoritarianism, surveillance, censorship, and financial exclusion, bitcoin empowers individuals to elude the expanding reach and tightening grip of institutions both public and private. So although bitcoin is money, it isn't just money. Bitcoin is resistance money.
Resistance Money: A Philosophical Case for Bitcoin begins by explaining why bitcoin was invented, how it works, and where it fits among other kinds of money. The authors then offer a framework for evaluating bitcoin from a global perspective…
To those who grew up in the 1960s and even for many who are much younger, the Beatles are the rock musicians we know the most about by far. We know their hometown, who the band’s ex-members are, Ringo’s birth name, and which half of Lennon and McCartney wrote which songs credited to the duo. So it’s amazing how much this book reveals that almost nobody previously knew about the Fab Four.
Craig Brown recounts what happened when John Lennon finally got a chance to meet his boyhood sex fantasy Brigitte Bardot, describes outlandish members of the group’s entourage, and provides much more detailed accounts of the foursome’s financial fiascos than were widely known until now.
What I love most of all about this book is the author’s unique storytelling style. He delivers a punchline in one snippet, picks up the thread in the next, and abruptly introduces a new character without (at first) disclosing what possible connection the person has to the Beatles. Brown is a master of foreshadowing and sprinkles in biographical information without producing a text as remotely arduous as a conventional group biography. Even if your own contraction of Beatlemania was a mild case, you will find this book an absolute delight.
Winner of the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
A distinctive portrait of the Fab Four by one of the sharpest and wittiest writers of our time
"If you want to know what it was like to live those extraordinary Beatles years in real time, read this book.” ―Alan Johnson, The Spectator
Though fifty years have passed since the breakup of the Beatles, the Fab Four continue to occupy an utterly unique place in popular culture. Their influence extends far beyond music and into realms as diverse as fashion and fine art, sexual politics and religion. When they appeared on…
Don’t operate on the theory propounded in accounting courses that the purpose of financial
statements is to present an accurate image of companies’ financial condition and performance.
This book’s essential message is that from the standpoint of the corporate issuers, the purpose
of financial statements is to raise cheap capital. The authors document the trickery (legal, in
most cases) that companies use to inflate the magnitude and stability of their profits, as well as
their balance sheet strength.
Most importantly, they detail how astute analysts or journalists detected instances of misleading
reporting before they triggered massive write-offs or Securities and Exchange Commission
actions that crashed the companies’ stock prices. Absorbing the lessons of these case studies
can help investors avoid becoming future victims.
One chapter of Financial Statement Analysis deals with equity analysis, describing advanced
methods that go beyond the standard focus on earnings per share. Another chapter addresses
credit analysis, tying it into the processes employed by credit rating agencies. After reading
Fridson and Alvarez’s critique of the audit process, you are liable to share their skepticism that
large restatements of previous years’ results truly resulted from inadvertent “errors” in the earlier
reporting.
