Taking off from the age old debate encompassing whom should a company serve in the first place, the shareholders or the stakeholders (the suppliers, customers, creditors, employers and the state), the book shows how the process of creating SHV is synergistic in nature. Creating valuefor the shareholders, which the book considers to be the most important issue, in the process, enhances value for the stakeholders as well.

SHV is at the core of the value-based management and an excercise in the value-creating methods is not new. What makes the book unique is the hands on experiences of the authors in the field, across different countries and different sectors of the economy.

The writers themselves were at the core of several problem solving teams with Price Waterhouse (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) - one of the widely respected firms in the financial world. As their jobs had warranted, the authors had criss-crossed the globe advicing clients on solving business problems and creating SHV.

Sectoral analysis as well as the individual country experiences make interesting reading. The country experiences of UK and the mainland Europe show how the `Anglo-Saxon' idea and the `stakeholder' idea of capitalism exist in close neighbourhood.

The special chapter dedicated to Japan shows how theAnglo-Saxon mode of capitalism was absent in the debt-ridden economy. However, missing are the SHV experiences of Hong Kong and Singapore, the two Asian economies competing for the crown of the free market in the continent.

The M&A aspect of business is addressed from the acquiring company's point of view. While it is commonplace that the shareholders of the traget firm gain during the takeover battle, the acquisition often becomes counter productive for the shareholders of the acquiring firm.

The authors propose an alternative method of valuing companies for acqusition purposes which doesn't ignore the SHV aspect.

In the normal business circumstances and the M&A aspects apart, SHV also comes in handy during business turn-around and is also explicitly dealt with in the book.

Three experienced brains who are into `solving complex problems for top companies' are joined by a freelance journalist to give a slightly technical handbook for managing the link between strategy and share price. The book alsogives a fair idea about the in-house thinking patterns in Price Waterhouse.

The narrative in the book is targeted towards the practising managers, the decision makers and the would-be-managers. The general readers, on the other hand, can gain an insight about how their agents should manage their company and optimise the value of investments.