Reference Books for Financial and Strategic Management

Syllabus
Part A: Financial Management (60 marks)
Nature and Scope of Financial Management – Capital Budgeting – Capital Structure – Sources of raising long term finance and Cost of Capital – Project Finance – Dividend Policy – Working Capital – Security Analysis – Portfolio Management

Part B: Strategic Management (40 marks)
Introduction to Management – Introduction to Strategic Management – Business Policy and Formulation of Functional Strategy – Strategic Analysis and Planning – Strategic Implementation and Control – Analysing Strategic Edge

How to Prepare for Financial and strategic Management (FsM)

Financial and strategic Management (FSM) in new syllabus of CS Executive is a combination of ‘Financial, Treasury and Forex Management’ (FTFM) and a small portion of ‘Strategic Management, Alliances and International Trade’ (SMAIT) which were in the professional level of old syllabuses. What’s new in FSM is that ICSI has avoided chapters like foreign exchange, derivatives, financial services etc. For most of the students under old syllabus, these portions were difficult to learn. In terms of the avoided chapters, SFM is beneficial to executive students. Rest of the chapters are exact replica of FTFM of professional level under old syllabus. Problem papers like FSM are considered to be scoring papers. FSM will gives almost equal weightage to the theory and practical problems. One cannot expect to pass the exam by covering either theory or practical problems alone.

For theory portion, study material is sufficient. For those, who want in depth understanding may refer the materials of expert authors enlisted below. If one is preparing the theory portion at the last stage (i.e. nearest to the exam schedule), resorting to the study material will be a time consuming job. In such instances, they can refer the practice manual issued by the institute. Practice Manual cover the core theory of the study material.

Practical Problems is a tricky area in SFM. For each topic, there will be number of problems with various adjustments and variations. In Financial Management area, tendency to ask repeated questions are quite high. In some instances, exact questions were asked in multiple attempts. Some questions will be asked by simply changing either the name of the company or the figure. Covering scanners will be helpful to getting an advantage on repeated questions. You can refer the scanners of FTFM under old syllabus for the relevant chapters.

Main key point to the FTFM questions are that, the institute may not be much comfortable to make new questions and preparing its answer key. So, they take the questions prepared by the experts of financial management. It saves their time and efforts. You can adopt the same approach of the institute by covering maximum number of practical problems by referring the books of experts in financial management. Some of the books were enlisted below for your reference.

For Strategic Management area, which constitutes part B, study material will be enough. There are no books available for reference.

Best Reference Books for Financial and strategic Management (FsM)

1. 1. 1. Study Material of ICSI
      2. Financial Management by M.Y.Khan and P.K.Jain – Get Your Copy Online
      3. Financial Management: Theory and Practice by Prasanna Chandra – Get Your Copy Online (with CD), or
      4. Financial Management by I.M.Pandey – Buy Online 
      5. Practice Manual for FTFM by ICSI – Get a PDF Copy
      6. Reliance Publication’s FTFM  Scanner