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I have both and I am a fan of both, but for different reasons. Pearl & Rosenbaum lay out a nice conceptual framework and talk you through some of the basic tools. Good for beginners and basic references. McKinsey is a much more dense book and dives deeper into financial analysis and related tools. My only real issue to pick w/ McKinsey are the 'twists' or 'improvements' they make to traditional formulas b/c its the McKinsey way. That and they use terminology that's slightly different such as NOPLAT vs. EBIAT, just a preference thing.

Why don't you keep Pearl & Rosenbaum on your desk and McKinsey on a jump drive or stored on your computer, McKinsey is a much larger book obv. I have a digital copy of it, if you want it.

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BepBep12 summed it up well.

If you're looking for something more advanced/detailed than the Rosenbaum book, I'd also take a look at the Scoopsbooks "Practitioner's Guide to Investment Banking" - http://www.scoopbooks.com/ourbooks_2.php

Provides a deeper dive into the M&A concepts and is very well laid out...basically Rosenbaum 2.0. Although the basic valuation sections are better in Rosenbaum, the scoopbooks also covers merger modeling. I personally found the section on M&A taxes to be very helpful over the course of my analyst stint.

 

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