Product Description

A definitive guide to the market of distressed companies' debt and equity securities.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #968770 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 234 pages

From the Publisher
In today's volatile business climate, with increasing numbers of bond defaults and Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings, the market for distressed companies' debt and equity securities continues to capture the interest and imagination of the investment, legal, banking and advisory communities. The profit-making potential of securities selling at discount prices makes distressed securities very attractive to the educated and aggressive investor. In this book, the author provides a definitive guide to this market, and applies his considerable analytical ability and practical experience to specific types of distressed securities, including proven strategies for bank debt, defaulted private trade debt, defaulted straight debt securities, and "fallen angels."

About the Author
Edward I. Altman is the Max L. Heine Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business, New York University. Since 1990, he has directed the research effort in Fixed Income and Credit Markets at the NYU Salomon Center and is currently the Vice-Director of the Center. Prior to serving in his present position, Professor Altman chaired the Stern School's MBA Program for 12 years. He has been a visiting Professor at the Hautes Etudes Commerciales and Universite de Paris-Dauphine in France, at the Pontificia Catolica Universidade in Rio de Janeiro, at the Australian Graduate School of Management in Sydney and Luigi Bocconi University in Milan.

Dr. Altman has an international reputation as an expert on corporate bankruptcy and credit risk analysis. He was named Laureate 1984 by the Hautes Etudes Commerciales Foundation in Paris for his accumulated works on corporate distress prediction models and procedures for firm financial rehabilitation and awarded the Graham & Dodd Scroll for 1985 by the Financial Analysts Federation for his work on Default Rates on High Yield Corporate Debt and was named "Profesor Honorario" by the University of Buenos Aires in 1996. He is currently an advisor to the Centrale dei Bilanci in Italy and a member of its Scientific and Technical Committee and to several foreign central banks. Dr. Altman was named to the Max L. Heine endowed professorship at Stern in 1988. He received his MBA and Ph.D. in Finance from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Professor Altman is one of the founders and an Executive Editor of the international publication, the Journal of Banking and Finance and Advisory Editor of a publisher series, the John Wiley Frontiers in Finance Series. Professor Altman has published over a dozen books and over 100 articles in scholarly finance, accounting and economic journals. He is the current editor of the Handbook of Corporate Finance and the Handbook of Financial Markets and Institutions and the author of the recently published books on Recent Advances in Corporate Finance; Investing in Junk Bonds; Default Risk, Mortality Rates and the Performance of Corporate Bonds; Distressed Securities: Analyzing and Evaluating Market Potential and Investment Risk; Corporate Financial Distress and Bankruptcy and his most recent work on Managing Credit Risk: The Next Great Financial Challenge (1998). His work has appeared in many languages including French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.

Dr. Altman's primary areas of research include bankruptcy analysis and prediction, credit and lending policies, risk management in banking, corporate finance and capital markets. He has been a consultant to several government agencies, major financial and accounting institutions and industrial companies and has lectured to executives in North America, South America, Europe, Australia-New Zealand, Asia and Africa. He has testified before the U.S. Congress, the New York State Senate, and several other government and regulatory organizations and is a Director and a member of the Advisory Board of a number of corporate, publishing, academic and financial institutions. Dr. Altman is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the InterSchool Orchestras of New York and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of American Financial History

Customer Reviews

Relevant but dated
Very good empirical material from the early stages of the market. The book is dated though since it has not been updated post the great increase in the size of markets. New classes of distressed coporates (telecoms & possibly future current dotcoms ?), new markets (Japan/Asia), new value extraction methods (CBOs) etc. which have materialised in the past few years need to be addressed as well, both in terms of market developments and further empirical evidence.

Empirical-driven research well-presented
A no-nonsense, cut'n dry overview of Mr. Altman's extensive empirical research on the distressed securities market. His statistical procedures and index calculations offer a nice illustrative summary of this niche market, albeit his sample size is quite limited and a handful of his models are rendered inconclusive. However, this book is geared for someone having a keen interest in distressed securities, in particular. Definitely not for someone who wishes to gain an introductory understanding of general finance. Personally, the one deficiency in the book is its dryness.

Good but dated
When I looked at the publication date above it said: "Paperback - 248 pages 2 edition (February 1999). In fact this book was actually published in 1991, making it 10 years old. If you were reading this book in say 1992 or 1993 it would be really relevant, but not in 2001. The basic information still remains useful and interesting, but the data summaries that date from 1989 are just not relevant anymore. ... I probaly would not have bought this book and would have looked for something fresher.