- Hardcover: 800 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins (9 July 1991)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0887304184
- ISBN-13: 978-0887304187
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 16.6 x 5.6 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 405,973 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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"Bennett Stewart's book is a notable example of what we at Chicago have always believed: Nothing is more practical than good theory. His neatly chosen, real-world illustrations bring the basic concepts of finance vividly to life. The book can be read with profit (and enjoyment) by anyone with an interest in corporate finance, from beginning student to senior executive."-- Merton H. Miller, Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor, Graduate School of Business, The University of Chicago, 1990 Nobel Prize winner""The Quest for Value" is the definitive handbook on how to enhance shareholder value. It provides senior managers with practical goals and guidelines to create value for their shareholders and for themselves." -- James J. Schiro, vice chairman, Price Waterhouse"Bennett Stewart challenges corporate management to focus on its principal mission of increasing shareholder wealth and shows how to do it. We are in the process of implementing a number of his recommendations for executive incentives."-- William W. McCarten, senior vice president, finance, corporate controller, Marriott Corporation""The Quest for Value" is an excellent work for the corporate strategist. It presents new, leading-edge planning paradigms in a practical, user-friendly way. Stewart's plan to restructure from within is of utmost importance to top management. It is my belief that companies may well come to be structured in the manner he prescribes, by necessity if not by choice."-- George J. Kirk, director, corporate strategy, corporate development, Westinghouse Electric Corporation"After more than forty experiences over ten years, we firmly believe that corporations that are owned by their managementand their board and are prudently leveraged will produce superior investment returns. In this excellent work, Bennett Stewart skillfully explains why."-- Carl Ferenbach, general partner, Berkshire Partners""The Quest for Value" is a stimulating and insightful presentation of financial issues facing every CEO in the 1990s." -- J. Ira Harris, general partner, Lazard Fr?res & Co.
Product Description
Confusion over what investors really want often makes it difficult for managers to reach decisions regarding business strategy, acquisitions and divestitures, financial structure, dividend policy and executive compensation. With company raiders knocking on just about every door, the cost of this ignorance is escalating. This book aims to help managers learn the processes that influence and control share prices. Written for senior management, key operating people, and planning and financial staff, this book provides a framework for the broadest range of company decision-making including goal setting, resource allocation, financial policy setting, incentive compensation planning and building shareholder value.
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First Sentence
It is easy to forget why senior management's most important job must be to maximize its firm's current market value. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
It is easy to forget why senior management's most important job must be to maximize its firm's current market value. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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19 reviews
34 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Outstanding work on Corporate Finance
24 Jun 1999
Format:Hardcover
I was introduced to The Quest for Value during my MBA program. The material covered in the book was the basis for my Finance course, and I purchased the book to examine the source material. Finance is a branch of Economics, not Accounting, and many of the assertions made by Stewart reflect that fact. Familiarity with the basics of Microeconomics will greatly facilitate an understanding of the concepts described in the book. The fact that Stewart's work builds on sound economic concepts should be considered a strength, and not a weakness. The fact that other investment valuation tools do not conform to standard economic theory (Asset-Based, Excess Earnings, etc.) is the primary weakness of those theories. Investors are generally concerned only with prospective cash flows and the risks associated with those cash flows. The EVA Model captures the essential factors determining return and risk, removing Accounting distortions, and allows managers, owners, and other stakeholders to make informed decisions. Portions of the EVA Model have been integrated into other valuation tools, but usually in a piecemeal fashion. The genius of the EVA Model is the consolidation of many useful theories into a single model. A word of caution. If you are planning to use the EVA Model to "beat the market", please read the book. Stewart, Merton Miller, Damodaran and others are strong believers in the efficient-market theory, which essentially refutes the notion that tools like the EVA Model can be used for such purposes. As far as the general acceptance of Stewart's theories, it has been my experience that most corporate Finance departments are run by Tax Accountants with a limited/non-existent knowledge of the economic principles espoused by Stewart. They remain (much like my Investment Management Professor [1998], who had little knowledge of Stewart) enamored of EPS and ROE, long after numerous studies have indicated a loose correlation between EPS/ROE and stock value. While the book won't help you "beat the market", it is an outstanding tool for performing valuations on Closely Held Companies. The Quest for Value, in combination with the works of Damodaran (Investment) and Shannon Pratt (The Valuation of Closely Held Companies, The Valuation of Small Businesses and Professional Practices), will greatly assist any efforts in the valuation of such businesses.
37 of 39 people found the following review helpful
A Holy-Priced Book, Though Not Valuation's Holy Grail
29 Nov 1999
Format:Hardcover
This book brings emphasis to the importance of Return on Invested Capital as a valuation metric in security analysis, although the author purports to substantially refine and expand on your prosaic understanding of this concept. It is an ambitious work that has a couple of inexplicable shortcomings, given its length, price, and its author's flair for pointing out the flaws in other valuation methods. The author makes no effort to apply his valuation methods to financial service companies (EVA is applicable to these kinds of companies, but you have to attend an EVA seminar to learn how to do that). There is no index! And there is little empirical data by researchers --outside the cult of EVA, at least-- to support some of Stewart's rather bold claims about this being a better metric for predicting stock price advancements than earnings, free cash flow, return on equity, etc.
And then there is the matter of EVA (tm) itself. Given the scarcity of objective data to support EVA as THE metric which best calibrates and predicts advancing/declining security market valuations, who really needs to embrace a somewhat complicated proprietary formula and worry about trademark infringement? For decades, Warren Buffett got by with crude, freebie valuation concepts such as return on equity, return on assets, the non-trademarked version of return on invested capital, and free cash flow. These ratios are as wonderfully easy to calculate in aggregate as EVA is hard to calculate, and the EVA enthusiast's faith that the latter proprietary concept is somehow better than the former freebie ones seems silly --although it does make for a lot of extra work (securing the future for the trademark owners, who have made a lucrative career of this stuff).
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Interesting, well-written and useful but.................
11 May 1999
Format:Hardcover
Stewart has crafted an engaging treatment of Economic Value Added (EVA) which is accessible to both financial professionals and "lay-investors" alike. The material is highly readable and the case examples serve well to illustrate important concepts. However, one caveat to all of those "fools" who think they have found the holy grail to selecting winning stocks: EVA has been around for a long time (the theoretical work precedes THE QUEST FOR VALUE by decades) and is well-integrated into investment management methodologies. There have been several studies which demonstrate that selecting stocks based on EVA or even changes in EVA will not produce excessive returns for investors (See Damodaran). Thus, the real "value" of THE QUEST FOR VALUE for private investors is to highlight the limitations of accounting measures of valuation.
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