Key Management Ratios, 4th edition
The Clearest Guide to the Critical Numbers That Drive Your Business


By Ciaran Walsh
Financial Times / Pearson Education
August 2006
ISBN: 0273707310
401 Pages, Illustrated, 6 1/8 x 9 1/8”
$59.50 paper original


Business ratios are the figures that provide management with targets and standards for their organisation. They direct businesses towards the most beneficial long-term strategies, as well as towards effective decision making.

This book enables managers of different functions to work together towards achieving business goals. It links the return on financial resources into the day-to-day operating parameters of the business - skills which any manager from any background can implement.

Areas covered include:
--the foundations
--the cash flow cycle
--financial leverage
--measuring and operating performance
--corporate valuation
--investment ratios

CONTENTS:

PART I FOUNDATIONS
1 Background
2 Financial statements
3 Balance sheet terms
4 Profit and loss account

PART II OPERATING PERFORMANCE
5 Measures of performance
6 Operating performance
7 Performance drivers

PART III CORPORATE LIQUIDITY
8 Cash flow cycle
9 Liquidity
10 Financial strength
11Cash flow

PART IV DETERMINANTS OF CORPORATE VALUE
12 Corporate valuation
13 Financial leverage and corporate valuation
14 Growth

PART V MANAGEMENT DECISION-MAKING
15 Cost, volume and price relationships
16 Investment ratios
17 Shareholder value added (SVA)
18 Acquisition analysis

PART VI THE USE & ABUSE OF RATIOS
19 Integrity of account statements
Appendix 1: Special items
Appendix 2: Companies used in the sample
Appendix 3: Full set of ratio charts from sample companies

Glossary
Index

Author
Ciaran Walsh is Senior Specialist Finance at the Irish Management Institute, Dublin. He is trained both as an economist and an accountant and had 15 year's industry experience before joining the academic world.His work with senior managers over many years has enabled him to develop his own unique approach to training corporate finance. As a consequence, he has lectured in most European countries, and the Middle East. His main research interest is to identify and computerize the links that tie corporate growth and capital structure into stockmarket valuation.



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