Financial Times Series – serie

Many professionals find that during written communication or presentations, it is harder to organise their thinking than to write the words. When ideas are not arranged in a clear and logical order, it may confuse the readers. This often leads to documents that are difficult to understand and do not make a strong impact. The Pyramid Principle offers a proven method to help you organise your thinking before you start writing. 

The Pyramid Principle is an international best seller that teaches how to write clear, direct and effective business documents. The book explains how to organise your ideas using a pyramid structure. It explains the difference between deduction and induction. It also shows you how to question and review the problem-solving process. 

This book will help you present your thinking in a clear way so that readers can easily understand your ideas. You will spend less time preparing your final draft and make your writing much clearer. It is ideal for professionals who want to improve their writing and presentations, especially those who want others to listen to their ideas and grow in their careers. 

Strategy is about shaping the future. Thinking strategically is what separates good managers and great leaders. Learn the fundamentals about how to create winning strategy and lead your team to deliver it. From understanding what strategy can do for you, through to creating a strategy and engaging others with strategy, this book offers practical guidance and expert tips. It is peppered with punchy, memorable examples from real leaders winning (and losing) with real world strategies. Strategy is simple, but simple is complex.

What’s new? The Speed Strategy edition includes tips, techniques and tactics for using Mckeown’s One-Page Speed Strategy. From running a strategy meeting to creating a strategy process, developing a culture of strategic thinkers and everything in between, it will help you to create real-world strategies that deliver outstanding results.

The Strategy Book will help any manager, regardless of experience, to better develop their inner strategic potential for outstanding results in our ever-changing world.

People who wanted to shape the future have created our present. With over 7 billion fellow humans sharing our planet, things are not going to slow down or get simpler. At the heart of strategy is the mind of the individual strategist, and by nurturing your ability to see the big picture you can get better at adapting successfully. You can get better at shaping events to get to somewhere better. Using available means to desirable ends.

Expectations keep shifting, new competitors keep appearing, rules change and then change again, technologies disrupt and then politics shake up the nature of the landscape in which you compete, work and live. Being more strategic is about outthinking both competitors and limitations.

Strategy is not a solo sport. The Strategy Book focuses on how you can create powerful strategies with other people to deliver success together in a competitive world. It answers the following questions:

It can be read as a whole, or you can dip into the easy-to-read, bite-size sections as and when you need to deal with a particular issue. The structure has been specially designed to make sections quick and easy to use – you’ll find yourself referring to them again and again.

By identifying and describing the most powerful financial and non-financial KPIs, this book will make life easier for you by defining them, explaining how and when they should be used and providing a rich library of KPIs that have been proven to significantly improve performance.

The book presents case examples to illustrate the selection and use of the KPIs and provides tools such as KPI selection templates and Key Performance Questions to help you apply the most appropriate KPIs effectively in your business.

Activist investors have sent shockwaves through corporations in recent years, personally targeting directors and executives at some of the world’s largest companies. No longer satisfied with operating on the fringes of business, they are now a firm fixture in the boardroom.

Up to a quarter of public companies could be targeted by activist campaigns in the coming years, with directors and executives at those corporations threatened with losing their jobs. The trend, which began in corporate America, has spread to the UK, Europe and Asia, taking in several high profile companies.

Barbarians in the Boardroom tells a compelling story of boardroom bust ups, dumped CEOs triumphant activists and pared back companies. It reveals real-life examples and interviews with executives and investors to explain why and how activist investors have managed to storm Wall Street and tear down City citadels. Owen Walker provides an insight into the way activists think, how they decide to target a company and how directors and executives could possibly work with them rather than against them.

‘A terrific book about the personalities, strategies, and tactics of high-profile activist investors. The stories are fascinating about the activist game plan and how it is changing...’

Robert J. Swieringa, Professor and Dean Emeritus, Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University

‘Excellent overview of activist hedge funds - it tells readers how these funds brought about significant changes in corporate boardrooms.’

Robert C. Pozen. Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School, former Chair of MFS Investment Management

"A great guide to how activist investors work - essential for corporate directors, investors and anyone with a passing interest. Filled with insights into a number of the most high-profile personality clashes and boardroom battles."

Barry Parr, Co-Chair of Pension Trustees AMNT and Non-Exec Director of CrowdBnk Ltd

“Barbarians in the Boardroom is an excellent forensic analysis of the new era of activist investing and the first to cover campaigns that have ousted S&P 500 boards, promoted giant mergers and permanently changed the roles played by boards of directors.”

Josh Black, Editor-in-Chief, Activist Insight

‘The rise of shareholders activists is one of the great capital market stories of the day. Packed with riveting tales from the activist battlefront, Owen Walker's book does it full justice.’

John Plender, Financial Times Columnist

 This landmark book by one of the world’s leading business thinkers is about managing, pure if not simple. It tackles the big questions managers everywhere face, such as:

MANAGING MAKES SENSE OF WHAT MIGHT BE THE WORLD’S MOST IMORTANT JOB.

ACCELERATE YOUR LEADERSHIP SUCCESS IN YOUR FIRST 100 DAYS - AND BEYOND

The first 100 days is a key indicator of success in your new role. With structured planning, commercial insights and leadership coaching, Niamh O'Keeffe provides all the crucial insights to empower any time-pressured leader to achieve the very best start.

Through its focussed approach, practical advice and exercises, frequent check-ins and real-life examples, Your First 100 Days is your all in one guide to getting ahead. Structured in bite-sized chunks and arranged along a 100-day timeline, you can create, deliver and sustain an effective plan during this crucial early phase to hit the ground running.

"Unlocks the secret of getting ahead, by getting you off to a great start."

Gene Reznik, Group Chief Strategy Officer, Accenture

"Niamh’s framework and approach provides a valuable and practical resource to create the positive momentum for your first 100 days."

Mark Spelman, Head of Thought Leadership, World Economic Forum

This book slims down his award-winning work Managing (2009) and provides streamlined advice to help new and experienced managers get it right.

Simply Managing answers questions including:

It provides thoughtful, yet practical advice from one of the world’s most influential management thinkers.

Traders Guns and Money is a wickedly comic exposé of the culture, games and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world. And played out with other people’s money.

A sensational insider’s view of the business of trading and marketing derivatives, this revised edition explains the frighteningly central role that derivatives and financial products played in the global financial crisis.

This worldwide bestseller reveals the truth about derivatives: those financial tools memorably described by Warren Buffett as ‘financial weapons of mass destruction’. Traders, Guns and Money will introduce you to the players and the practices and reveals how the real money is made and lost.

The global financial crisis took almost everyone by surprise and even now new problems keep appearing and solutions continue to be elusive. In the original version of Traders, Guns and Money, Satyajit Das provided a highly prescient insight into the structure and risk of the world financial system exposing the problems that are becoming readily apparent. In a 2006 speech – The Coming Credit Crash – Das argued that: "an informed analysis … shows that risk is not better spread but more leveraged and (arguably) more concentrated…. This does not improve the overall stability and security of the financial system but exposes it to increased risk of a "crash".

Helps you diagnose your project and identify the types of issues you are facing. It provides you with the methods, tools and framework you need to get your projects implemented. Written from your point of view, it accepts that your life is already busy and pulls out the core which yields big results.

Having the big idea is merely the beginning. Raising and using venture capital is pivotal to the success of many an ambitious new venture, but venture capital is more than money. It's far too expensive to be treated merely as cash, and if used well, far more critical to the successful venture.This can be a daunting process.

Smarter Ventures leads you inside the world of European venture capital, and takes you step-by-step through the venture cycle.

By holding a mirror up to both sides of the money-raising process, Katharine Campbell shows how entrepreneurs can better understand venture capitalists - and vice versa – leading to more productive relationships and smarter ventures.

Katharine Campbell explains how venture capitalists think, what they are looking for and why. Learn how to spot the good -and the bad – investors, and equip yourself with the tools and the knowledge to seal a successful partnership.

Smarter Ventures is the bible of the European venture capital market and your complete companion to the venture cycle.

"Smarter Ventures is essential reading for anyone interested and involved in new ventures and venture capital – whether funding it, using it, providing it or teaching potential entrepreneurs…. The book is so complete it is almost a funding cookbook…. Anyone involved in enterprise, as a practitioner, venture capitalist or academic, should regard Smarter Ventures as required reading."

- Book Review, Financial Times

Good ideas don't sell themselves.

In today's business world it's no longer just sales people who are responsible for winning business. Many people, from TV producers to landscape gardeners, consultants to builders, need to employ convincing communication skills to win clients and commissions.  Even managers within a business have to ‘sell’ their ideas, proposals and plans as they compete for support and scarce resources.

With increasingly competitive markets the norm, your customers and clients are almost certain to have a choice. It's not just what your business can do that matters - it's how you pitch your offer that determines success. Poor preparation or presentation at the pitching stage will lose the business to a competitor. Getting the basics right is not enough: you have to get ahead of the competition.

This guide is packed with practical ideas, tips and checklists that will ensure you are ahead of the crowd. It takes you right through the process, from deciding whether or not to pitch, getting to know the client, doing the essential preparation and then pitching for success. Unlike most of the titles available, this book covers both written proposals and oral presentations, showing you how to harness effective business communication skills to make the perfect winning pitch.

The Definitive Business Series will ensure you get up to speed fast with all the business essentials you need to be a success. With their guided step-by-step approach the latest practical business techniques and concepts and their easy-to-read style, The Definitive Business Series cover every aspect of the topic from the business basics to the essential skills needed to progress in your career.

The Definitive Business Series. Your fast-track to business success.

Many managers are extremely good at managing people but are bad at managing money, and harbour a secret fear of finance. But numbers matter and managers need to be confident with the basics of business finance – otherwise they simply can’t do their job effectively. 

The Definitive Guide to Business Finance (previously titled The Definitive Guide to Managing Numbers) has been relaunched, revised and renamed. It includes a new introduction and has been updated throughout to keep in with the changing markets.Ittakes you step-by-step through every essential aspect of business finance you need to know. Assuming no specialised prior knowledge, it reveals shortcuts and tricks that will help make you a financial wizard whether it’s P&L, your budget, forecasts, cash flow, financial decisions, pricing policies or funding and financing.

In no time at all, you will not only be able to produce an outstanding set of figures, you will also have a much clearer understanding of what they mean and how to use them to be a more effective manager. You won’t fear finance ever again. 

This is the only book on basic finance you'll need. Richard Stutely achieves what you might think is impossible: making finance fun with an amusing, wry and always common sense approach that will make you wonder what you ever worried about. 

The Definitive Business Series will ensure you get up to speed fast with all the business essentials you need to be a success. With their guided step-by-step approach the latest practical business techniques and concepts and their easy-to-read style, The Definitive Business Series cover every aspect of the topic from the business basics to the essential skills needed to progress in your career.

The Definitive Business Series. Your fast-track to business success.

Concise, realistic and very readable, this book is packed with insightful thinking for service excellence"

Alan Parker

Chief Executive Officer

Whitbread Group

‘Brilliantly simple premise – that a winning service approach lies in a ‘rising upward trajectory’ culminating in a brilliant finish – dissected into eight very practical steps that anyone can use.  As the owner of a service brand myself, I’ll be starting on Monday.’

Adam Morgan, Founder, eatbigfish

'Rich with practical, real life solutions'. 

Dean Finch

Group Chief Executive

National Express

‘A thought provoking practical "drama" for anyone who is passionate about excelling at customer service and driving business performance.’Mike Holliday-WilliamsManaging DirectorRSA UK Personal Insurance

'An excellent primer about how to improve services for the public.'Dame Sally C DaviesDirector General of Research and DevelopmentDepartment of Health

To win and keep customers you have to do more than just meet their expectations - you have to surpass them. The Finishing Touch will show you how to make a good customer experience great by building up to an impressive finish that every customer will remember.  Using real-life examples, practical advice and tailored information for your industry at the end of each chapter, Tony Cram will show you how to make your customers feel positive about your business, bring them back to buy more and inspire them to promote your business to others.

Deliver amazing service that will get your business noticed and make sure your customers come back from more

The Finishing Touchwill show you how to:

About the author

Tony Cram has presented on competitive marketing and innovation at conferences and company conventions around the world including Berlin, Buenos Aires, Budapest, Gothenburg, Istanbul, London, Paris and Warsaw. 

As a Programme Director at Ashridge Business School - one of Europe's leading centres for Management Development - he designs and delivers executive development programmes on business strategy and market innovation.  His particular interest is in understanding customer value, developing brands and the dynamics of long-term business relationships.

Tony Cram's previous books include - Customers that Count: How to build living relationships with your most valuable customers, Smarter Pricing: How to capture more value in your market and The Power of Relationship Marketing.

Clear information shows clear thinking, and clear thinking informs, influences and impresses.

How often do you stare at uninviting and confusing presentations, notes, reports and information packs and get nothing out of them?  It doesn’t have to be like this. We could all produce amazingly clear work that has incredible impact – if only we knew how.  This book shows you how. It is full of ideas, tips and principles that are simple and easy to implement, yet brilliantly effective.You will never look at a business document in the same way again.  And your work will impress the people that matter and get the results you want.

It guides you through the most effective ways of using all forms of presenting information - tables, charts, slides, flowcharts, etc. Moon also introduces the new WiT (Words in Tables) approach to give impact to your message on all documents and slides.

“I love Jon’s work. His tips are hugely useful, his WiT fantastic and ground-breaking, and his book essential reading. If you want to enhance your sales tenders, pitches and slides – if you want to win more business – get into Jon’s stuff. It’s really, really good.”

Gavin Duffy, a Dragon on Ireland’s “Dragons’ Den”, top media coach and economics columnist with the Irish Sunday Independent

"Every once in a while, simple ideas change business forever - this book is full of such ideas. A must-read if you want to do something about all those impenetrable reports, slides and information packs. This book has all the answers and will redefine how you think about business documents." Dominic Burke, Chief Executive, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group plc.

"This is a vital topic that has been sorely neglected. Jon’s book changes that. It is crammed with new ideas that are creative, thoughtful, yet practical and relevant for all disciplines of business. Essential reading for everyone in business! " Dr Jikyeong Kang, Professor of Marketing and Director of MBA Programmes, Manchester Business School.

 "I’ve seen Jon’s talk and his ideas are full of originality and wisdom. Many ideas are stunningly simple, others are mould breaking. He takes preconceived thinking and turns it on his head. Your business reporting will never be the same again. " Michael Izza, Chief Executive ICAEA.

"The antidote to bland writing and bland thinking" Tom Peters

Funky Business tells us that difference rules, and difference comes from the way people think. In this world, we can no longer do "business as usual" - we need funky business.

With its fresh thinking approach and updated with the latest business messages and new examples, Funky Business will ensure you are always on the right side of change.

Only talent will allow you to be unique. Forget what has come before. The new edition of Funky Business will rewrite the future for organizations and leaders.

"The gospel of new thinking is Funky Business" Industry Standard

"Funky Business is rigorously researched, witty and intelligent, and overflows with provocative ideas" Business Voice

"Jon and Andy lay out a road-map for great brand management, packed with

the essentials of brand theory and practical tips to make it happen. It does

for brand management what the Haynes workshop manuals do for cars."

Peter Gowers, Chief Executive, InterContinental Hotels Group, Asia-Pacific

"Brands are about difference and personality. This book really is different. It makes you think and makes you smile!"

Peter Fisk, The Genius Works

"Branding isn't rocket science but it sometimes pretends to be. Here's abook without such pretensions, a book to make you smile, learning while you smile."

John Simmons, Director, The Writer

"an enjoyable read full of practical tips. There is far too much jargon in business generally and in branding and communications in particular, this book is an entertaining antidote to that"

Mike Lee, OBE, CEO Vero Communications

Humorous, practical and everything you need to know about branding.

This is a different kind of business book. You will find no jargon or dense, theory-laden text.

Building a brand with impact is one of the most important tasks that any business faces. Few people understand how to actually go about creating an effective brand. This book is a no holds barred guide to what brand building is, what it isn’t and exactly what you have to do to build your brand.

Be inspired by real-life stories from the people who did and didn’t mess with their logo and succeeded or failed as a result. Read the stories from big-name brands like Orange, M&S, Red Bull, Apple, Innocent, PwC and FCUK.

There are numerous brand books but they either fall into the dull, worthy and theoretical which nobody reads or they tell case studies of famous brands which are soon out of date and which do not easily translate into practical advice. This book is unashamedly the antidote to that. It will tell you all you need to know about branding and entertain you at the same time.

Do you know who the best people in your team are? Have you got a clear idea of how much they deliver?

Many companies still proclaim that ‘Our people are our most important asset’, yet fail to treat that asset as valuable. In fact they often ignore their in-house talent, believing that the only way to get the top people is to seek elsewhere.Who Are Your Best People? destroys the widely-accepted myth of a talent shortage and shows how you can unearth and value the hidden talent that already exist in your organisation.

This book will open your eyes to the reality of talent management and show you the most effective ways to grow, support and retain the best people for your business.

Find out who your best people are - and keep them.

Acquisitions have a poor record of creating value for shareholders. Studies have shown that as many as 70% of mergers and acquisitions fail to meet their objectives. Some even bankrupt the acquiring company. Why is this? Managers often have too little experience with the acquisition process or make acquisitions for the wrong reasons.

Smarter Acquisitions will make sure you are part of the 30% that get it right. By following ten key steps you can ensure that you get real value from your acquisitions. It covers the entire acquisition process, from identifying targets through to integrating the new company, providing you with the knowledge you need to lead an acquisition or to participate at any stage.

Private equity is now a massive force in the marketplace This book gives you an overview of this recently emerging phenomenon and will help you explore when you could profitably incorporate this option into your acquisitions strategy.

With over 33,000 copies sold, Key Management Ratios is a market “classic”. This new edition is re-packaged with a new jacket design to revitalise the Key Management brand and new two-colour internals make it more readable and visually appealing.

Key Management Ratiosis an antidote to any fear of finance. Drawing data from 200 companies worldwide, the book brings clarity and simplicity to its explanation of every measure and shows how they all link together to drive your business.

From cash flow and profit to ROI and ROTA, its unique approach remains as classic as ever, bringing a simple and visual understanding to a complex subject.

"Henry Mintzberg's views are a breath of fresh air which can only encourage the good guys." The Observer

Tied up in knots by KPIs? Confused by core competencies? Management doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, it shouldn’t be!

One of today’ best-known and most controversial thinkers on management has joined forces with other leading business figures to provide a thought-provoking mix of writing on management. The cutting edge views depicted in this book are controversially the opposite of what is often held up as the truth in management.

Management? Its Not What you Think! brings readers an unusual mix of perspectives to help stimulate more creative management thinking and more enjoyable, challenging and more productive ways to lead their teams. This is a book readers can dip into, a book they can savour, a book that won’t fail to get them reflecting on what management really is…

What has neuroscience got to do with branding? The link may not be immediately obvious, but the fact is, our brains select brands in much the same way that Google selects websites. So, just as web marketers play on Google’s algorithm to make sure their site appears as high up the search list as possible, brand marketers should play on the brain’s algorithm to make sure their brand is at the top of their customers’ minds at the moment they choose which brand to buy.

This ground-breaking new book brings the proven effects of hard science to the creative practice of branding. It shows you how to harness this powerful combination to your own advantage by helping you understand how customers’ brains work when they choose brands. A strong brand cannot be build effectively without taking into account the laws of the brain – which, as this book shows, really exist and can be scientifically proven to work. Once you know this, you can apply the familiar branding laws of relevance, coherence and participation more precisely, more confidently and to much greater effect. This means your brand will have a much greater chance of being chosen by customers than your competitors’ brands.

Branding with Brainsshatters the conventional approach to branding, which is based on hunches and intuition, by uncovering the hard, scientific truth about why customers choose some brands over others. Insights into company stories, from Leica to Innocent Drinks, from Starbucks to Schipol International Airport, give you the fascinating truth about how the processes that go on in our brain affect our decisions to buy a particular product or service. All in all, this breathtakingly radical new book from Tjaco Walvis presents a daringly different, state of the art approach to brand strategy that will help you build powerful brands more efficiently, more effectively and more reliably than ever before.

Branding really is all in the mind – and this book proves it!

Have you ever wondered how the top City traders make big profits from share trading? Do you know why the best investors know exactly when the market is going to rise or fall? And do you wish you could do the same?

By following 20 hard and fast rules,Trading Secrets shows you how you can make the same high returns as experienced investors and traders. Using historical, economic and technical trend analysis from the last fifty years, it identifies the ways for you to capitalise on such events as the clocks going back or moving forward, religious holidays, major sporting events and even the US presidential election.

Written for both experienced investors and also those with little knowledge of the stock market, Simon Thompson’s practical investing guide offers trading strategies that you can use over the short-term or the long-term. For instance, do you know how daylight changes affect how the stock market performs and, more importantly, how to make big gains by trading on this knowledge? Or do you know which sector has massively outperformed the market in the first quarter of the year – posting a quarterly return of 12 per cent – in all bar four years in the past three decades?

Trading Secrets uncovers all and more importantly explains why these trends occur, so that you can be confident your investments will pay off, even when the market is falling.

The Financial Times Guide to Using and Interpreting Company Accounts is designed for the non-accountant manager, investor or entrepreneur who is expected to have financial knowledge but may not have accounting training.  

Wendy McKenzie approaches the project via three key points: What information will I find in these accounts?; How do I analyse the accounts?; How can I use my analysis?

Using publicly available actual accounts, the book begins by covering the ‘numbers’ from company accounts then moves on to information such as the financial review and then explains the logic of the accounts. To help with the interpreting of the numbers Wendy shows the reader how to understand issues such as cash flow, what this will tell you about a company, how to consider a competitor’s accounts and how to perform ratio calculations to help with company analysis.

The human race created money and finance. But our inventions re-create us. Mankind mistook money—a lubricant of society and human well-being—for an end in itself. Finance, the monetary shadow of real things, came to dominate human reality. Extreme Money tells the story of how this happened—and, in so doing, it tells the story of the modern world.

Bestselling author Satyajit Das draws on 33 years of personal experience at the heart of modern global finance to narrate this story. Das reveals the spectacular, dangerous money games that have generated increasingly massive bubbles of fake growth, Ponzi prosperity, sophistication, and wealth—while endangering the jobs, possessions, and futures of virtually everyone outside the financial industry.  Das shows how “extreme money” has become ever more unreal; how “voodoo banking” continues to generate massive phony profits even now; and how a new generation of “Masters of the Universe” has come to dominate the world.

Extreme Money is about:The new financial fundamentalism: false gods, false prophets - Faith in money, faith in risk, faith in shadowsThe cult of risk and the growth engine that isn’t - How financial engineering replaced real engineering and illusions replaced realityFinancial alchemy and the “Doomsday Debt Machine”- The rise of the global financial machine we cannot escapeThe new global oligarchy—and the nihilistic games they play - Too smart, too fast, too greedy, too self-absorbed—and far too dangerous

Using memorable caricatures to highlight the effects of your behaviour as a leader, this book offers a powerful model for effective leadership

Are you a Badger or a Doormat? provides you with clear instructions and simple self-coaching processes which will propel you along the path to leadership success. It uses memorable caricatures to show extreme leadership styles, teaching you what behaviour to avoid and what to do more of, in an accessible and amusing way.

Throughout the book Rosie Miller, a top international executive coach, and 20 highly experienced leaders offer advice on the mindsets, habits and working practices that will make you a successful leader. This book gives you the practical and direct guidance you need to upgrade your thinking and your behaviour to become an energetic, focused and visionary leader.

The focus is on the five skills common to all the most effective leaders:

Each chapter is broken down into the following clearly sign-posted sections:

This thorough reference guide to reading and really understanding the financial pages shows you where to look for information and how to make best use of it. Designed for a range of users, from corporate managers to individual investors, it shows you how to assess and evaluate information so as to benefit your investing and saving strategies and better understand economic indicators and financial jargon.

Financial Guide to Using the Financial Pages uses real examples from the financial newspapers, case studies of businesses, company reports and electronic information.

This new edition has been fully updated with new features, including:

- A wider range of examples of financial information.

- References at the end of each chapter, rather than at the end of the book.

- Online and ‘new media’ references incorporated throughout the book

- More discussion on financial regulation and govern­mental bodies.

- A glossary of financial terms.

Do you want to feel more confident about your investment decisions?

Do you need to have a better understanding of how the stock markets value a business?

Do you want to know what the key ratios are that drive share price performance?

The Financial Times Guide to Making the Right Investment Decisions is the insider’s guide to how the market examines companies and values shares. It helps you understand the factors that drive long term wealth creation as well as highlighting the key risks that lead to value being destroyed.

Originally published as Analysing Companies and Valuing Shares, this new edition has been fully revised and includes a new and easy to follow framework for understanding valuation. Perfect for investors at all levels, it guides you through the investment maze, and highlights the key issues you need to consider to invest successfully.

The Financial Times Guide to Making the Right Investment Decisions:

· Gives you an easy to follow framework to guide your decision-making

· Explains clearly and concisely key financial concepts and how they drive valuation

· Shows you the key ratios to monitor and how they affect share prices

· Illustrates the key risks and warning signals that will help you avoid losses

· Identifies the qualities of company management and governance that differentiates winners from losers

· Brings the issues and numbers to life with real examples and case studies

In a challenging economic and stock market environment, the need to take better informed decisions is vital. This clear, common sense guide provides a comprehensive and accessible framework for understanding the valuation of a business and what drives its share price. Knowing the key numbers, ratios and techniques that professional investors use will help you to reduce your risk and invest more profitably.

From bestselling author Glen Arnold, this is a jargon-busting book that describes how financial markets work, where they are located and how they impact on everyday life. It assumes no specialised prior knowledge of finance theory and provides an authoritative and comprehensive run-down of the workings of the modern financial system.

Using real world examples from media such as the Financial Times, Arnold gives an international perspective on the financial markets with frequent comparisons in the workings of major financial centres such as the Bank of England and the City, the Federal Reserve System and Wall Street, the Japanese Central Bank, the European Central Bank and IMF and World Bank.