Active Credit Portfolio Management in Practice

In this new book, Jacqueline Davies and Jeremy Kourdi argue that organizations are failing to realize the simple truth about talent: they are misunderstanding their people, making flawed choices and allowing the true potential of their workforce to go unused and unfulfilled. Understanding the truth about talent in all its forms is a vital step in developing an organization and ensuring long-term, sustainable success. A core part of their thesis is that organizations should recognize that people at different stages of their career and with different experiences and aspirations need to developed and engaged in different ways. The book provides a practical guide explaining how to segment the workforce, why, what to expect when you do, and how to ensure that this approach succeeds.

Is it possible that the way to win in business is to give employees exactly what they want? Yes. As RESPECT reveals, managers and organizations who give their employees what they want outperform those who don't. This is no hunch – it's a fact based on more than 25 years of global research. Drs. Jack Wiley and Brenda Kowske have amassed a research database unlike any other, and it all started with this simple question: «What is the most important thing you want from the organization for which you work?» Organizations that apply this research have more engaged employees, more satisfied customers, and better shareholder returns. It all boils down to seven key elements, summarized by the acronym RESPECT. These are the seven things that employees really want: Recognition, Exciting Work, Security, Pay, Education, Conditions and Truth. This book taps the authors' «in the trenches» consulting experience and offers real solutions on each element of RESPECT. Written for all types of leaders—from supervisors to the c-suite—readers can pick and choose the proven solutions that are relevant to their own organizations. By weaving stories and narrative, the authors make complex information easy to understand and fun to read. In addition, RESPECT meets the demands of the global economy, offering an international perspective with corresponding cultural nuances that are critical to helping leaders manage the needs of their workforces.

The recent financial crisis brought to light many of the misunderstandings and misuses of exotic derivatives. With market participants on both the buy and sell-side having been found guilty of not understanding the products they were dealing with, never before has there been a greater need for clarification and explanation. Exotic Options and Hybrids is a practical guide to structuring, pricing and hedging complex exotic options and hybrid derivatives that will serve readers through the recent crisis, the road to recovery, the next bull market and beyond. Written by experienced practitioners, it focuses on the three main parts of a derivative’s life: the structuring of a product, its pricing and its hedging. Divided into four parts, the book covers a multitude of structures, encompassing many of the most up-to-date and promising products from exotic equity derivatives and structured notes to hybrid derivatives and dynamic strategies. Based on a realistic setting from the heart of the business, inside a derivatives operation, the practical and intuitive discussions of these aspects make these exotic concepts truly accessible. Adoptions of real trades are examined in detail, and all of the numerous examples are carefully selected so as to highlight interesting and significant aspects of the business. The introduction of payoff structures is accompanied by scenario analysis, diagrams and lifelike sample term sheets. Readers learn how to spot where the risks lie to pave the way for sound valuation and hedging of such products. There are also questions and accompanying discussions dispersed in the text, each exploited to illustrate one or more concepts from the context in which they are set. The applications, the strengths and the limitations of various models are highlighted, in relevance to the products and their risks, rather than the model implementations. Models are de-mystified in separately dedicated sections, but their implications are alluded to throughout the book in an intuitive and non-mathematical manner. By discussing exotic options and hybrids in a practical, non-mathematical and highly intuitive setting, this book will blast through the misunderstanding of exotic derivatives, enabling practitioners to fully understand and correctly structure, price and hedge theses products effectively, and stand strong as the only book in its class to make these “exotic” concepts truly accessible.

Wiley's new Handbook of Decision Making is a vital reference text for all students and professionals of management, organization and decision making. The handbook offers a wide range of theoretical and empirical approaches to the understanding of organizational and strategic decisions. Contributors are internationally known experts drawn from North America, Canada and Europe who have spent many years in the study of decision making, and decision making relevant topics. We believe the handbook will become a tour de force in the understanding decision making, offering a wide variety of perspectives, topics, and summative understanding of the field. Chapters in the Handbook were prepared by the leading experts in their field and include cutting edge empirical, theoretical, and review chapters. The chapters bring together for the first time a critical mass of writing on decision making as an organizational and research activity. The Editors are two of the leading international experts in decision making and contribute to the Handbook with five original Chapters that offer an appraisal of the field and suggestions for research, as well as the current status of decision making practice and suggestion for improvement.

For more than a decade, emerging markets have proved one of the most exciting areas of investment, but the sector has not been without its dangers. Private and professional investors alike have continuously been attracted by the promise of riches on offer from countries such as China, India, Brazil and Russia but, as often as not, have been left with their fingers burnt. Investing in Emerging Markets: The BRIC Economies and Beyond tempers the undoubted causes for emerging market optimism with a healthy dose of reality, illustrating how for every argument in favour of investing in the sector there are one or more reasons to tread very carefully indeed. In the wake of the credit crunch and ensuing market turmoil, it also analyses where the emerging markets now fit within the global investment landscape. With the economies of the US, Europe and Japan hit by an economic crisis very much of their own making, has the credibility gap between developed and developing markets narrowed? Has the playing field become more level? Investing in Emerging Markets: The BRIC Economies and Beyond offers a fresh, clear-eyed and objective look at an area that can only grow in importance over the next decade. It balances a realistic appraisal of the opportunities on offer from the emerging markets with a pragmatic assessment of the potential pitfalls facing investors, in the process providing an accessible introduction to newcomers and more experienced investors with a valuable and compact point of reference.