Face Value – Creation and Destruction of Shareholder Value in India

GV Ramakrishna, former Chairman of "This is an uncommon book on a common topic written in a readable style. The little understood, but widely used cliche shareholder value has been demystified with a detailed and perceptive analysis of several companies. Many myths have been convincingly exploded... being the first of its kind, this book will be of immense value to capital market players, intermediaries, corporate executives, and all those interested in the practice of shareholder value."Published in 2003, Face Value is the first Indian book on widely discussed and misunderstood ideas of our time.This book, the first such book on shareholder value in India, was printed in 2003 and has been out of print since then. Republished as a kindle edition, it covers 10 years of rich corporate and market history between 1992-2002, which is unavailable anywhere else. This is the period when all the current drivers of value creation came to be identified and understood – prudent capital allocation, committed management, operating efficiency, all leading to earnings growth, no equity dilution and high return on invested capital.It is a book on the various factors that make shareholder value rise or fall and how these factors played out in the ‘90s, when the economy was characterised by high frictional cost of doing business, absence of current productivity tools including internet and high interest cost. Economic liberalisation, competition and entry of foreign institutional investors were also forcing companies to evolve and change. Most companies were clueless about what drove shareholder value and so, made mistakes that were responsible for wanton value destruction in the 1990s. This book captures this important part of Indian corporate history.Businessmen, fund managers, individual investors, business consultants, brokers, investment bankers, regulators, academics and students of management, market and finance, interested in the history of shareholder value in the aftermath of ‘90s liberalisation, will find this book unique and fascinating.This book is a product of a simple what creates and destroys shareholder value? In seeking answers to this question, since 1996, the author and his colleagues have been involved in pioneering work involving a multi-level research and analysis that monitoring of hundreds of corporate actions and their short-term and long-term impact on shareholder valueClose interaction with top managers and CEOsQuantitative and qualitative correlation studies of market prices and corporate strategiesExtensive field surveys on value drivers (done for more than 20 top India clients) that involved meeting brokers, analysts and fund managers - minds that influence stock pricesAuthor's two decades of close observation of how Indian businessmen think and behaveThe result of such intensive research, analysis and synthesis is a comprehensive book full of unique local insights presented in a lively style.