The classic and early definitive work on investment banking.

Publisher Comments

Category: Banking & Finance Of Interest: Bankruptcy & Distressed Restructurings: Analytical Issues and Investment Opportunities Bankruptcy Investing: How to Profit from Distressed Companies Distressed Investment Banking: To the Abyss and Back  Investing in Junk Bonds: Inside the High Yield Debt Market Market Making and the Changing Structure of the Securities Industry The Deregulation of the Banking and Securities Industries The High-Yield Debt Market: Investment Performance and Economic Impact The Law and Practice in Corporate Control

This book is the reprint of the classic and early definitive work on investment banking. Applauded, relied on, and read extensively, all of the essential financial intermediation functions in the securities industry are as relevant today as when the book was first written. The book covers the areas of market making, the market for corporate control, new issues flotation, and policy issues. A useful definitional list of common investment banking and financial terms is included. This book will prove to be informative reading or study for professionals as well as all interested in securities and financial markets.

From Turnarounds and Workouts,
Review by Henry Berry:

Even though Bloch states that “no last word may ever be written about the investment banking industry,” he nonetheless has written a definitive book on the subject. 

Bloch wrote Inside Investment Banking after discovering that no textbook on the subject was available when he began teaching a course on investment banking. Bloch’s book is like a textbook, though one not meant to be limited to classroom use. It’s a complete, knowledgeable study of the structure and operations of the field of investment banking. With a long career in the field, including work at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Bloch has the background for writing the book. He sought the input of many of his friends and contacts in investment banking for material as well as for critical guidance to put together a text that would stand the test of time. 

While giving a nod to today’s heightened interest in the innovative securities that receive the most attention in the popular media, Inside Investment Banking concentrates for the most part on the unchanging elements of the field. The book takes a subject that can appear mystifying to the average person and makes it understandable by concentrating on its central processes, institutional forms, and permanent aims. The author shows how all aspects of the complex and ever-changing field of investment banking, including its most misunderstood topic of innovative securities, leads to a “financial ecology” which benefits business organizations, individual investors in general, and the economy as a whole. “[T]he marketplace for innovative securities becomes, because of its imitators, a systematic mechanism for spreading risk and improving efficiency for market makers and investors,” says Bloch.

For example, Bloch takes the reader through investment banking’s “market making” which continually adapts to changing economic circumstances to attract the interest of investors. In doing so, he covers the technical subject of arbitrage, the role of the venture capitalist, and the purpose of initial public offerings, among other matters. In addition to describing and explaining the abiding basics of the field, Bloch also takes up issues regarding policy (for example, full disclosure and government regulation) that have arisen from the changes in the field and its enhanced visibility with the public. In dealing with these issues, which are to a large degree social issues, and similar topics which inherently have no final resolution, Bloch deals indirectly with criticisms the field has come under in recent years. 

Bloch cites the familiar refrain “the more things change, the more they remain the same” and then shows how this applies to investment banking. With deregulation in the banking industry, globalization, mergers among leading investment firms, and the growing number of individuals researching and trading stocks on their own, there is the appearance of sweeping change in investment banking. However, as Inside Investment Banking shows, underlying these surface changes is the efficiency of the market.

Anyone looking for an authoritative work covering in depth the fundamentals of the field while reflecting both the interest and concerns about this central field in the contemporary economy should look to Bloch’s Inside Investment Banking.

After time as an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Ernest Bloch was a Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University.

Ernest Bloch was a Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University, and his teaching career spanned more than forty years. Prior to that he was an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Dr. Bloch was the author of numerous books and monographs, as well as articles published in professional journals. He died in 1998.

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