The author of the book, Modern Financial Investment Management, is a
senior lecturer in Banking and Finance at the Great Zimbabwe University,
Masvingo, Zimbabwe. It was the author’s observation that most developing
economies the world over have failed to align their development processes
towards the sustainable development path because of lack of financial
resources and/or financial investment strategies.
The book is structured in such a way that it starts off with conventional notions of
finance where operations of money and capital markets are put forward
before the examination of financial models such as capital asset pricing,
arbitrage pricing, and three factor and simple index models. Countries are
introduced to conventional financial securities, mainly certificates of
deposit, bills, bonds and shares or stocks which can be traded on financial
markets and their indispensable use in the growth and development of
nations.
The book proceeds to evaluate the need for perfect and efficient
market systems in an economy before considering the benefits that
developing countries would draw from the introduction of derivative
markets. Some of the specific benefits that countries would draw from the
introduction of derivative markets were the improved financialization of the
economy, efficiency, transparency, discipline, innovation and technical
progress. Most developing countries have very shallow conventional
financial markets yet on the other hand had abundant resource endowments
which favoured the introduction of derivative markets immediately.
The book concludes by exploring the framework on the acquisitions and mergers
of financial firms and how these can be exploited in order to rescue small
firms from liquidation and financial distress and/or lure much needed
foreign capital for economic growth and development.