The Barrow



Financial Modelling, Management Reporting & Training	September 2008

"The Barrow" by Jeff Robson & Neale Blackwood
Hello !firstname! New Premises: 131 Adelaide Tce, East Perth We moved into our new premises recently and are all enjoying our new office. Feel free to pop in and visit if you're in the area and don't forget to update your (our) contact details ... full details below. New White Paper: "Turn the Tables on Excel" Wyn Hopkins, one of our financial modelling specialists, has written a great White paper on how Excel's data tables can be used to provide valuable insight into key business drivers and save hours of unnecessary work. Download now! New Training Courses: "Excelerating your Financial Intelligence" Our website recently went live with full details of our structured series of Excel-related training modules for Finance and Accounting professionals. So now you can: - get full details of all courses - make enquiries - book in-house sessions - book public courses ... and more. Take a Look! New Survey: How do you use Excel? We've added a 30-second mini-survey to our Newsletter with 4 short questions about how you use Excel. Take the survey and help us give you an even better newsletter! Results published next month. Now, let's open the gate and push out the barrow! Jeff Robson & Neale Blackwood


In this issue... @ M&A Strategies @ Key Bored @ Training at your place @ Rice	M&A Strategies in a Down Market Article: It’s gut-check time for CEOs. As the credit crunch threatens to become a global downturn, corporate leaders have a choice: pull in their horns and ride out the storm or look for opportunities to pick up bargain-basement assets that will help them grow and create future value for shareholders. If past is prologue, more will follow the first course—which is a mistake. Full Article (Source: McKinsey) Comment: If you read the press currently, it's sometimes hard to be optimistic (especially after the last few days!). Credit crunch, interest rates, banks, inflation ... it's all "Woes R us!" But everyone also wants to buy something when it's cheap and sell it when the price goes up. So are prices cheaper when the economy is going well or when there's doom and gloom? The answer is obvious, but as the research in this article illustrates, more companies buy when the economy is expanding than when it's contracting. The point is that there may be a number of opportunities to purchase good quality assets at reduced prices but you'll need guts to do it! If you'd like some assistance in analysing opportunities to see how potential acquisitions would affect your bottom line, contact us on +61 8 6210 8500 or simply reply to this e-mail.
	Better Excel: Key Bored? There a few keys on your keyboard that you probably use rarely and you may even wonder if they do anything at all. Well, here are some tips that you might find useful using those obscure keys. The tilde key - "what's a tilde?" you say. Well it's a squiggly line (~) that is usually at the very top left hand corner of your keyboard. This key allows you to view the formulas in your spreadsheet. With a spreadsheet open simply press CTRL+~ (ie hold down CTRL and press the tilde key) - all the formulas will become visible. Pressing it again will return the spreadsheet to its normal display. This can be handy to find cells with formulas and for documenting spreadsheets. The ALT key - which is next to the Space Bar (that's the widest key on your keyboard - not the cantina in Star Wars) allows you to put additional lines within a cell. If you type some text in a cell then press ALT+ENTER, Excel will insert a new line within the cell and you can keep typing. The height of the row will automatically be increased to handle the extra height. This is different from using the Wrap Text format as it allows you to specify where the line break will be. Right Click key Positioned between the ALT and CTRL keys on standard keyboards. This key mimics the right click. This can be handy on a laptop without an external mouse. Also useful when selecting objects in Excel charts which can be hard to right click sometimes. If you have the object selected pressing this key will open the relevant short cut menu. The Windows key OK, you say you do use that key to open the Start menu. Well, did you know you can use it with other keys to do other things? Windows key + e will opens Windows Explorer at My Computer + m will minimize all windows + d will show the desktop (similar to + m above, but pressing it again will return you to the window you were originally on) + f will open the Search dialog (it used to be called "Find" hence the f) +Pause/Break will display the System Properties - a quick way to see the amount of RAM and other techie stuff for a PC. Just call us on +61 8 6210 8500 or click "Reply" to discuss how we can help with your specific spreadsheets and financial models!
	Training at Your Place All our training courses are now available in-house. How easy is that! We bring all the equipment, take it all away, and there's just one flat fee for up to 7 people per course. All courses are provided by expert facilitators who have years of both consulting and commercial experience ... so all the examples are very practical and help with the sorts of issues we know finance and accounting staff face every day. We are happy to run either half-day sessions (so your staff can still get work done in the afternoon) or full-day sessions (so all your training is done at once) ... it's your choice. All our courses are tailored specifically for finance and accounting professionals plus there are many public sessions throughout Southeast Asia. Learn more Just call us on +61 8 6210 8500 or click "Reply" to discuss how we can help with your specific training needs!
	Free Rice for the World's Hungry English: Do you have an Imponderably Large Vocabulary? Would you like to put your hyperkinesia to a good cause and help feed the world's starving people? Well, surf to www.freerice.com This site is sanctioned by the United Nations and is, as the name suggests, FREE. So maybe during your lunch time you can learn a new word or two AND help feed the world. No registration is required. Geography: What's the capital of Djibouti? This next site tests your geographic knowledge. www.freepoverty.com donates cups of water for each correct answer. You just need to point to where places are in the world. You can improve your geographic knowledge whilst helping the third world. There are even some Australian places you need to find! Btw, it's "Djibouti"!

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M&A Strategies in a Down Market