Price Waterhouse is one of the oldest established accountancy practices in the world. It is also one of the largest. This history is the story of commercial success: of how a Victorian city partnership of three men grew, in less than 150 years, to employ more than 40,000 people in 143 countries.

From banks to brokerage houses, profitability is the watchword for today's financial institutions. The search is unceasing for better ways to achieve it, maintain it, and defend it against competitive pressures. For some time, managers within financial institutions have been aware of a powerful new tool for cost analysis developed in the manufacturing sector: activity-based costing (ABC). A handful of financial services consultants around the world have been helping their financial services clients to migrate ABC from its birthplace in the manufacturing sector to the world of financial services, where it can be immensely effective as a basis for strategic decisions. It was time for a book that clarifies for general executives how ABC works and what contributions it can make to the formation of winning strategies. And it was time for a practical, comprehensive book that initiates management accountants in the financial services sector into this new approach to cost analysis. The Price Waterhouse Guide to Activity-Based Costing for Financial Institutions is that book. The ABC approach is particularly effective because financial services companies sell services as well as products. Profitability measurement cannot rely on older, more traditional methods of cost accounting, techniques that focus on the costs of raw materials and labor. The Price Waterhouse Guide to Activity-Based Costing for Financial Institutions shows how these firms can use the breakthrough concept of ABC in the same way that other companies manage all activities from the top down, more efficiently. This book explains the methods of this technique, with detailed guidelines that help firms plan for costs before theyoccur, rather than simply monitoring them.

“Shows how humans have brought us to the brink and how humanity can find solutions. I urge people to read with humility and the daring to act.” —Harpal Singh, former Chair, Save the Children, India, and former Vice Chair, Save the Children International In conversations with people all over the world, from government officials and business leaders to taxi drivers and schoolteachers, Blair Sheppard, global leader for strategy and leadership at PwC, discovered they all had surprisingly similar concerns. In this prescient and pragmatic book, he and his team sum up these concerns in what they call the ADAPT framework: Asymmetry of wealth; Disruption wrought by the unexpected and often problematic consequences of technology; Age disparities--stresses caused by very young or very old populations in developed and emerging countries; Polarization as a symptom of the breakdown in global and national consensus; and loss of Trust in the institutions that underpin and stabilize society. These concerns are in turn precipitating four crises: a crisis of prosperity, a crisis of technology, a crisis of institutional legitimacy, and a crisis of leadership. Sheppard and his team analyze the complex roots of these crises--but they also offer solutions, albeit often seemingly counterintuitive ones. For example, in an era of globalization, we need to place a much greater emphasis on developing self-sustaining local economies. And as technology permeates our lives, we need computer scientists and engineers conversant with sociology and psychology and poets who can code. The authors argue persuasively that we have only a decade to make headway on these problems. But if we tackle them now, thoughtfully, imaginatively, creatively, and energetically, in ten years we could be looking at a dawn instead of darkness.

In a recent survey of Fortune 500 companies by Price Waterhouse, nearly 80 percent indicated that they are undergoing some kind of large-scale change. Based on the Price Waterhouse Change Integration Team's experiences with hundreds of clients, Better Change involves managers in the real texture and "feel" of change projects.