Pascal Costantini gives a lively and wonderfully readable account of ten years of efforts by a small group of investment analysts to find a reliable, practical and implementable method for valuing and selecting shares. The result of their effort is an original investment methodology called CROCI (Cash Return on Capital Invested), best described as a variation of the economic profit model.

For over a decade now, Costantini's group at Deutsche Bank has been using this valuation tool every time it has had to take a view on the pricing of an equity asset, be it a market, a sector or an individual share - in other words, every single working day, since it is this group's job to advise institutional investors on equity valuation.