I understand that there is a definitive book on understanding and
calculating financial metrics and ratios (e.g. EBITDA, Debt/Equity . .
.).  It is supposed to have myriad examples and discuss the
calculation under a broad range of scenarios.

1.  What is this book / resource called
2.  How much is it and how do I get it?

---

Request for Question Clarification by juggler-ga on 06 Jun 2003 23:31 PDT

Hi.

There are quite a few books that are similar to what you're
describing.

Any additional details might help narrow things down. Do you remember
anything about the author or title? How and when did you hear about
this book?  Any extra clues may help lead us to your book.

---

Clarification of Question by nick37-ga on 07 Jun 2003 03:59 PDT

The resource was described to me by someone who crunched ratios for a
company contracting to one of the big brokerage houses. His company
would get fired if they found two wrong ratios in a year out of many
thousands calculated. He described it as authoritative and possibly
costing around $500 or so.  There may be more than one source that can
meet my needs.  The idea is -
Financials for any company
+
Ratio bible guided analysis
=
Authoritative ratios and metrics for the company

BTW, I called it the ratio bible, I don't know that anyone else would

Hi Nick37,

I saw your inquiry asking why your questions aren't being answered. 

Basically, on this one, I ran into some roadblocks.  The main one was
when you mentioned the approximate price of $500.  This fact
eliminated most of the books that I thought might be right since those
books were mass-marketed and priced at substantially less than $500.

I suspect that your book is probably something that is marketed
directly to investment professionals and is typically not available in
bookstores and libraries.  It could be "Industry Norms and Key
Business Ratios" from Dun & Bradstreet or perhaps a similar book from
another vendor.
http://www.dnb.com/US/dbproducts/ProdDesc.asp?id=138&ver=173

It's hard for someone who is not in the investment business to obtain
a lot of information about publications like these without calling a
salesperson. Getting a salesperson involved is a bit of a hassle.

Another problem here is that even if I were to call up a salesperson
at Dun & Bradstreet or Standard & Poors or another vendor, and ask if
their  financial ratio products were the "bibles" of the subject,
they'd probably all tell me that their publications were indeed the
industry standard.  Thus, it'd be pretty hard to ever really prove
that a book is the one that your acquaintance was talking about.

I hope this helps explain the situation on this question.