Anonymous said
This is the kind of book that will give you hard time trying to find out how the author really built the model. I felt the author is so proud of his work that he kept for himself the details of building the sheets but unfortunately this is what any reader would look for in any financial modeling book. I would never recommend this book for any serious person looking for a detailed book in financial modeling.
I gave the book two stars because I copied the sheets in the CD, built it again from scratch, used some of the formulas to save time in building my model which in fact gave me longer time but helped in a way or another to achieve my objective.
John P. Lincoln said
This book suffers from lack of organization of the material in a cohesive way that a user can follow. While the examples on the CD are great, but following the book is quite impossible. I agree with the other reviewers, that despite over 8 years of Excel/VBA experience I could not grasp this book.
My suggestion: Learn from the examples on the CD instead.
Jay Levitt said
I've been making Excel models on and off for almost 20 years. I've wished for someone to write this book badly. And now someone has!
It would be difficult to overstate the violence this book does to the English language. But I'll say this: I now have a handy rejoinder to anyone who ever claims that the Americans are killing the language. The author, Alastair Day, is from the U.K.
The net result: This book is impossible to read. It's ironic, since the entire book is geared toward helping us make our Excel presentations more, well, presentable; the author seems to have a decent understanding of how to lay out data in an attractive, informative way. Yet the book itself is rambling, vague, imprecise, confusing, and ultimately pointless.
With mangled sentences on every page, no single example can suffice, but here's one anyway:
"Another feature is the sign for the cash flows. You make fewer errors if you consider money out to be negative and money in to be positive. It means that you never have to add cash flows rather than inserting more complex positive and negative statements. In this example, the depreciation is negative in the workings; however, the expenditure saves tax so this is positive."
You might think that this makes more sense in context. I assure you: There is no context.
The book needs an editor.
Robert Roszkowski said
I would not recommend this book because it was very difficult to follow the examples demonstrated in the book. The author jumps around frequently and does not lay out the examples in step by step format.
I have been using Excel VBA for 10+ years and still could not figure out how most of these examples were put together.
F. Potenza said
Mastering Financial Modelling in Microsoft Excel: A practitioner's guide to applied corporate finance (2nd Edition) (Financial Times Series)
The book was in very good conditions!
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