Financial Modeling and Valuation: A Practical Guide to Investment Banking and Private Equity 1st Edition

This book literally taught me how to model. It's incredible. It takes you step by step through a valuation of Walmart, which is a fairly complicated company to model. It has an accompanying spreadsheet, and the book provides complete instructions on every key to enter, with helpful tables to compare results with in case you make a mistake. I was then able to use the spreadsheet and this book to value other companies. I don't write a ton of reviews, you can look at my profile to make sure this isn't a fake review, but I will write one when I feel credit is due and I want to give back a bit to the author. Maybe the best part of the book is that the author outlines step by step instructions for how to fix a balance sheet that isn't balancing! As a novice I had tried constructing financial statements and oftentimes had difficulty here. It may be that I'm sloppy, but the commonsense technique the authors showed allowed me to fix a balance sheet in less than an hour. Finally, walking through the example really helped me understand how the different financial statements interact in a way I hadn't before, even though I had studied them for a lot of time. There are a few typos here and there, but overall this book is ten stars in my opinion.

An all around great introductory book on financial modeling! It literally takes you by the hand and walks you step-by-step on how to model/create pro-forma financial statements based on educated reasoning. I also love the fact that the author made available the Excel file to work along as you read; this should be done to get the most out of the reading. The author also has his own YouTube channel in case you want to dive a little deeper on some of the topics discussed. I would definitely read this book first and then compliment it with Investment Banking by Rosenbaum and Pearl, which end up going deeper into IB specific topics.

I bought this book as a reference for my teaching in college. The content is not comprehensive enough for a whole semester, but it is very helpful and serves well for a 4-6 weeks module.The readers are asked to built a financial model from scratch using information from Walmart's annual reports. After the connected models is built, the readers are asked to conduct basic valuation (perhaps too basic) with the model. The author assumes that the readers have no background at all, so he spent lots of time to explain very basic accounting. Thus I believe that this book is great for beginners. Even for business school college graduates, one can follow the book and get a connected model in a short period of time. I found this feature being extremely helpful and unique comparing to other books, I can simply train my teaching assistants from different backgrounds by as them to read and follow the book.If you have no financial background, this book provides most value. For those business school students who is new to financial modeling, this book could be a very good case study.The main complaint I have is that the readers may find it difficult to generalize what they have learned. Despite the author provides some guidelines throughout the process, most of them are about the modeling techniques. After all, this is a book about techniques. If you want more explanations on how the deal is done and the principles, Rosenbaum and Pearl is way to go. In fact, I end up using this book to complement Rosenbaum and Pearl in my course. The students walked away with a fully connected model which they can modify and apply on other cases easily.

Mr. Pignataro's book is as fundamental as it gets when learning the invaluable skill of financial modeling. Whether you are well versed or just beginning to enter the field of finance, namely valuation, this book covers what you need to know. The book not only teaches you the techniques and method of valuation but also walks you through each line item found on the several financial statements. This is particularly useful for individuals who are not entirely familiar with accounting basics. From a personal experience, I was at first very intimidated by even the idea of financial modeling. However, after completing Mr. Pignataro's book I no longer was intimidated. The book broke it down to the point an individual with little knowledge of finance and accounting would be able to follow along. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to step foot into the financial modeling sector.

Great book! I am a student who has spent a couple summers interning in M&A and this book was the best introduction I could ask for!Very simple step by step instruction with an explanation of why each thing is done. This is the base from where I have been building my knowledge of modeling and valuation and also connects my finance and accounting classes together.In comparison to other Wall Street training tools such as Wall Street Prep and Training The Street, the Pignataro one is rather basic. I would say this is best used as an introductory book. WSP and TTS go much more indepth on the concepts, modeling, and goes over LBO, Acc/Dil, Precedents, and Comps. But these packages are $400+, for $70 you can't beat this book.

Paul has many years of experience in the field of Investment Banking, Private equity and the financial industry as a whole. He's done a wonderful job translating his knowledge into simply understood concepts that anyone can learn. Literally anyone with passion for valuation and financial modeling whether it be for personal investing or on the job purposes. He makes some of the toughest concepts such as balancing a balance sheet, which keeps IB analysts up all night, an easy fix. This book is a must have for anyone interested in learning valuation and especially those looking to enter IB, PE, and Hedge Fund industries. Thanks to Paul I've learned a skill crucial to my success in my future ventures!