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Interpreting Company Reports and Accounts

By: Geoffrey Holmes Alan Sugden Paul Gee
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Financial Times/ Prentice Hall
ISBN: 0273655922
ISBN-13: 9780273655923
Released: 19 Jul 2002
RRP: £34.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

A Complete Guide To Understanding Accounts - By: , 04 Feb 2001
I have read many books in my quest to learn how to analyse the fundamentals of a company. In terms of information & how much I have learnt from it, this book gives more information per page, than some other books manage per chapter. Could I just stress though that it is by no means an easy read & will require maybe reading 2 or three times to fully understand everything. It covers every aspect of a plc's company report & gives lots of handy pointers to watch out for. If your new to this however I would suggest you begin by reading a simpler book such as 'which guide to shares' before attempting this. Overalll a very informative book for anyone intent on learning about this kind of thing.
easy to read and understand - By: , 04 Aug 2000
This is a good book if someone is reallly interested in learning how to analyze company reports (balance sheets, P&L accounts & cash flow statements). It also contains a good section about the important financial ratios. It contains reallly nice real life examples which makes things easy to understand. I reallly liked it.
This is excellent: logical, clear, concise and comprehensive - By: , 21 May 2000
A book ought to be judged on the basis on what it is intended to achieve which the authors say is "... to be a practical guide to the interpretation of reports & accounts. Although frequent reference is made to the legal, accounting & Stock Exchange requirements that accounts have to meet, this is done in order to show just what information the reader should expect to find, where to look for it, & then to use it, rather than as an explanation of how to prepare a set of accounts."

The text is easily accessible in A4 manual style format with a comprehensive list of contents & a good index. It was first published in 1979 & this is the seventh edition, so it has had a few readers over the years. One of the authors was the editor of the ICAEW house journal for over 20 years & this is a good guide to the style & quality of the work. The style is technical that would suite the serious investor & people with a business background with some financial knowledge.

The text in laid out in 32 chapters included in sections:

Introduction (This covers the basics & the jargon in 15 pages); Formation (and listing); The Balance Sheet: Capital Employed - Assets: Fixed & Current & Current liabilities; The Profit & Loss Account; Cash Flow (a subject that can be difficult to grasp); The Group (explaining how accounts are consolidated); & Other topics: Foreign exchange; Historical summaries, ratios & trends; Chairman's statement, operating & financial reviews & directors' report; Corporate governance & the auditors' report; Interim statements; Other sources of information (which I found helpful); Inflation accounting; UK v US GAAP; Putting it alll together; & Future developments in accounting.

There are some useful questions in the text for reflection with suggested solutions in Appendix 5.

How you get on with this book will depend to some extent on your present knowledge & what you want to know. There are many excellent accounting & finance texts on the market, but I would suggest that if you want to learn more about book-keeping & accounts why not try for a start Frank Wood's 'Business Accounting 1' & 'Business Accounting 2' (Financial Times - Pitman Publishing). If you want to go more technical why not try Spicer & Pegler's 'Book-Keeping & Accounts' by Paul Gee (Butterworth Tolley). If you want a definitive work on financial reporting why not have a look at A Student's Manual of Accounting by PricewaterhouseCoopers (paperback - approx 3100 pages).

A useful companion that covers much of the same ground as the text currently under review is the Financial Times 'Guide to Using & Interpreting Company Accounts' by Wendy McKenzie (Financial Times - Pitman Publishing). This has more of a slant on interpretation & analysis - once you have understood the facts being presented to you to ensure that you are comparing like with like.

The press comment on the back cover of the book under review includes a quote from the Financial Times that "The book is wholly successful in its aim of providing a guide for 'anybody with a reasonably enquiring mind' on how to take to pieces a set of company accounts." I would agree with their view. This text is not about book-keeping but how to read a set of accounts, to understand the basis upon which the information has been compiled & presented to enable the reader to draw informed conclusions.

An overated text that gives little clear guidance - By: , 08 Feb 2000
This texts is confusing & long winded. It may be technicallly correct but does not give a clear methodology for approaching a set of accounts.