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Financial Modeling (平装)
by Simon Benninga
| Category:
Finance, Textbooks |
| Market price: ¥ 718.00
MSL price:
¥ 708.00
[ Shop incentives ]
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Comprehensive with concepts explained with immense clarity, and end-of-the chapter exercises as well as CD-ROM, this book is wildly popular and an absolutely essential reading on financial modeling. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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Yvonne Reinertson (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
As a university teacher of strategic corporate finance and optimal investment, I have watched the financial industry analytics transcend hand calculation with financial calculators to financial modeling with spreadsheet software. Depending on whether the financial specialty is in corporate or banking/brokerage, the job skills requirement can range from corporate cost control to optimal portfolio design. Thus, modeling skills services both company research and financial planning.
Whenever I travel in my business, this reference book goes with me; additionally, in both Russia and Germany, it was the book used by the corresponding McKinsey consultants. If you are comfortable with financial principles, purchase this book. If, however, you need to review financial fundamentals, then first purchase Dr. Benninga's textbook, Principles of Finance with Excel (see my review).
Statement: Learning this skill will keep you from selling electronic appliances at a discount retailer, cold calling for a debt shop, or writing contracts on leased vehicles, as your first "out-of-college" job. If you are already out of college, learning this skill might keep you from being stuck in a dead-end position.
INVESTMENTS: The study of equity and capital markets is fundamental to anyone specializing in finance. Potential development from studying this book is the possibly dramatic extension to your financial skill set by adding the ability to analyze and then model optimal investment portfolios using Excel. Most analyses in business will be completed using spreadsheets, or other software, and not by hand calculation. In fact, much of your time as a financial specialist, in any capacity, will be building spreadsheets to solve complex financial problems. The sequence of spreadsheets used in investments analytics have become increasingly sophisticated: From complex financial models in asset valuation to detailed derivative payoff structures. With the skills developed in studying advanced business analysis techniques in Dr. Benninga's textbooks, investors, and advisors, can locate efficiently run companies to be included in optimally diversified portfolios.
In watching the transcendence of financial industry analytics transcendence hand calculation with financial calculators to financial modeling with spreadsheet software, I have repeatedly witnessed students with financial modeling skills obtain jobs that are typically reserved for specialists holding advanced degrees or having multiple years of experience. Both brokerages and banks in the investment side of the financial industry are increasing requiring knowledge and skills in designing optimal portfolio design. Put simply, it is the ability to strategically design a "real time" investor's portfolio that is driving the demand for Excel modeling skills by financial firms. In order to design optimal portfolios, skills in corporate financial modeling are necessary. The ability to recognize well run companies is the ability to compile a diversified and optimal portfolio: The company seeks tools to help run operations and financing efficiently, and the investor seeks tools to help find efficiently managed companies. While most company's financial models are designed based on revenue analytics, the investor's model is a portfolio consisting of the various potentially profitable investments. For investors, the stocks being held in the investor's portfolio will be those of efficient companies exhibiting the investment characteristics required by the investor. From the business viewpoint, those who truly gain from knowing these analysis techniques are the businesspeople that use them to run efficient companies; from the investment viewpoint, those who truly gain are the individuals who use the tools to find those efficiently managed companies worthy of investment. It is important to realize that the skills needed by an investor are no different from the skills needed by good managers. When evaluating a company for investment, an investor will often use the same models that business executives use in their financial and operational management and forecasting. Once an individual learns how to analyze and value cash flows, the viewpoint can be either that of a business evaluating a potential project, or an individual evaluating a potential investment. The point in all of this, with either company financial planning, or investment planning, making the needed modifications to a changing, and rapidly more global, world in Excel is easy.
In using Dr. Benninga's books, you can expand beyond the capital market basics in your financial knowledge to include spreadsheet modeling; furthermore, in this process, develop highly marketable financial modeling skills that will boost your ability to advance your career. |
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
The simplicity and transparency of many of these models inspires me to give this book five stars. I am an expert modeler and find it useful to have an excel version of many of the more complex models as a cross-check and as a quick desk-top reference. People are often amazed at how quickly I can produce a ball park indication in which the handle is always correct. This book is a must for advanced model builders. If one can't produce a close answer in Excel, one may have to review the fundamentals before embarking on an advanced - and time consuming - model project.
The only shortcoming is in the fastest growing new products in the credit derivatives world, but the methods in this book can be adapted. Tavakoli provides product descriptions in another excellent resource "Credit Derivatives".
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James Garrett (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
If you need to build a working valuation model, calculate the risk of a portfolio with 100+ securities, or figure out what return you might expect to get from a portfolio of high-yield bonds, then you'll find Simon Beninga's "Financial Modeling" merits far more than five stars: this is one book that is indispensable.
One of the biggest problems I ran into during my MBA program was the way my professors taught Corporate Finance. I had great profs, true, but they were teaching theoretical concepts from theoretical textbooks. Sure, you learned the basics: CAPM, net present value, basic options and futures, Arbitrage Pricing Theory, VAR and TEV, but I have always maintained that the best way of learning a subject - particularly corporate finance - is by getting your hands dirty and digging into the guts of the material.
Since Corporate Finance, off-balance sheet instruments aside, isn't very dirty, the best way to get a hands-on practical approach in terms of Capital Structure, the appropriate discount rate to use in pricing an asset, risk, and optimal debt and dividends is to program in Excel and Visual Basic. The problem is that many top finance texts don't offer supplemental material to translate the theoretical concepts into actual valuation and spreadsheet models, which any financial analyst will contend is the life-blood of the industry.
With that in mind, Simon Beninga's Financial Modeling is a kind of "Joy of Cooking" for initiate investment bankers, corporate financiers, controllers, analysts, and anyone who wants to use core Corporate Finance concepts in the real world. Beninga goes through the standard laundry list of Corporate Finance text topics - from the optimal risky portfolio to the term structure of interest rates - and shows you how to translate these concepts into workable spreadsheet models that can illustrate, illuminate, and get to the heart of a problem.
If you're a new MBA or financial analyst, you'll find much to love in Beninga's approach, and by pairing the newly expanded 2nd edition up with a top theoretical finance textbook (Ross, Westerfield et al.'s Corporate Finance is a fine example) you'll get the most out of your MBA program and have a solid foundation for building Excel and Visual Basic financial models that work.
I liken Financial Modeling to a cookbook, in that Beninga provides all the ingredients necessary to the model at hand: he begins with a sprinkling of theory, whether it's modeling a bond portfolio's immunization, calculating the cost of capital, estimating a portfolio's Beta with no short-selling, or pricing put and call options using both the binomial theorem and Black- Scholes. His writing is spare, terse, and to the point, but I have learned more about advanced corporate finance theory through Beninga's marvellously pithy writing and copious Excel examples than I have in reading ten 'top of the list' finance books.
In addition to nicely expanded sections on options (including portfolio insurance) and leasing (including the technically sophisticated subject of leveraged leasing, which requires Excel to comprehend), Beninga concludes his sprightly little tome with a section on getting the most out of Excel (useful little shortcuts that a financial analyst will need but may not have heard of) and a nice little introductory primer on programming in Visual Basic.
Financial Modeling is an absolute essential if you're going to make Corporate Finance your profession. For an equally elegant and practical treatment of building discounted cash flow models for businesses, the reader would be advised to pick up Beninga's Corporate Finance, which, while not equally oriented in spreadsheet modeling, is one of the most terse, accessible, and reasonably technically sophisticated Corp-Fin books on the market today. (James Stephen Garrett, USA)
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
I recently got Benninga's book on financial modeling. I think it is a great book! For once, someone has taken the time to write a book that takes financial theory out of the classroom and follows it directly in a simple path to useful applications. Unfortunately all too many academic authors fail to take their work the final step and thus much of it can never be fully applied.
I went through many of the exercises and did not find any errors or mistakes. I suspect that those readers commenting on mistakes lack certain basic Excel skills (necessary for this book). If you're interested in financial modeling, or want to sharpen your finance skills, this is the book to get.
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Steven Schroder (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
Thank you for your very excellent text on financial analysis. I found the writing excellent and the examples very useful in developing models. I will be using the specific subjects of "Financial Statement Modeling", "Valuation Analysis" and "Lease Analysis" in my practice. I congratulate you on a well written and documented book. I would very much like further discussion on the calculation of terminal value in chapter 2, page 30... Again, thank you for a most excellent tool. I will continue to use this text in my future work. |
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Franco Arda (MSL quote), UK
<2006-12-29 00:00>
Finally a book for the Finance Specialist using Excel. Fantastic explanation of every step, starting at the very beginning of each topic.
I. Corporate Finance Models Basic Financial Calculations, Calculation of Cost of Capital, Financial Statement Modeling, Using Financial Statement Models for Valuation, The Financial Analysis of Leasing, The Financial Analysis of Leveraged Leases. Great basics from which you can build your own models, improvements etc.
II. Portfolio Models Calculating the Variance-Covariance Matrix, No Short Sale Restriction, Estimating Beta & SML, Short Sale Restriction, VAR. Basic topics in PM, and less used on Excel in the professional world. But, very exciting to gain thorough understanding by doing it on Excel.
III. Option Pricing Models My topic. Binomial Model, LogNorm Distribution, B&S Model, Portfolio Insurance, Real Options, Early Excercising. Again, great excerise to do it on Excel for learning purposes. Nice intro on Real Options using Binomial Model, but not my beloved B&S.
IV. Bonds and Duration Duration, Immunisation, Modelling the Term Structure, Calculating Default expec.adj. Bond Returns, Cheapest to Deliver. Cannot comment to this topic.
V. Technical Considerations Random Numbers, Data Tables, Matrices, The Gauss-Seidel Method, Excel Functions, Some Excel Hints. Matrices explained on Excel! Never seen that before. The rest almost replaces a single Excel Handbook.
VI. Introduction to Visual Basic for Applications.
User-defined Functions with VBA for Applications, Types and Loops, Macros and User Interaction, Arrays, Objects. The basics of VBA that help you to master many VBA problems. Fantastic work Simon Benninga!
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
This is a very good book in showing the reader how to utilize and manipulate Excel for financial problem solving and modeling applications. If you are looking for a book that will show you how to build a leverage buy- out or M&A model from scratch, your expectations are way too high. What this book shows you is how to build those types of models by showing you how to model and use various Excel functions to build the various sub- sections of those types of complicated models and link them all together.
I highly recommend this book to MBA students who are career changers and are looking to enter corporate finance or consulting careers where quantitative Excel usage is part of the job. This book shows you how to get the most out of Excel, which is a very user friendly software package. The book comes with a CD-ROM which has examples as utilized in the book and homework problems which are good and can be somewhat hard which forces you to learn Excel for financial applications. If you are a quick learner and highly motivated, you will get a lot out of this book. Nothing is to be feared. It is all to be mastered. By buying this book and working out the Excel problems and exercises on my own, my confidence level with Excel and my own modeling skills has shot up. Given what I have learned from this book, i consider the price to be a bargain. This is very much a learning by doing book. You will get a lot out of it. |
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
This is spectacularly effective guide to basic financial modeling using Excel and VBA. Far too many financial textbooks confine themselves to theory without giving the student any guidelines on how to put what they have learned into practice - a startling omission in what is a pre-eminently practical field. Benninga has attempted to fill that gap, and he succeeds brilliantly. Using very clear language and a step-by-step approach, he teaches the reader how to actually construct for himself or herself a series of different financial models that are immediately applicable in the real world. There are sections on corporate finance (cash flow) models, basic portfolio models (CAPM applications) and a really good one on option pricing models that has saved my bacon on more than one occasion! Other sections cover topics such as fixed income and Excel/VBA issues. In conclusion, this is a very impressive text, complete with usable models on CD-ROM, that can take you from novice to mid-level quant in a few weeks! |
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
I highly recommend this book to any aspiring financial analyst. It is definitely worth it, even at the list price.
Want to master the fundamentals of basic finance using Excel? Then this is one of the few books on the market that really meet this need. Want to set up more advanced mathematics modeling? Well as the introduction of this explains, this book is more like a cookbook: it lists the required basic ingredients and the culinary process but if you want to spice the dish (financial model) up, it is up to the individuals to dig out those advanced formulas from the financial trade journals and apply them to the models.
I first saw the first edition of this book in my college library. Took it home and was EXCITED. I was looking for a practical book that would show me the intricacies of Excel for setting up financial models and this was like a god-sent. Like one of the other reviewers said, this book combined basic finance, Excel functions, and VBA programming. To add practicality to this book, Professor Benninga even showed how to download financial data from the internet. Granted it is rather basic, but it adds to the usability of his book, making it a well-round book.
The best parts are end-of-the chapter exercises. Solutions are provided in the accompanying CD-ROM. See how many ways can you solve the same problem.
Professor Benninga always outlines the assumptions and explains the parameters of each model. We should remember that in many instances, unrealistic assumptions lead to way-of-the mark numbers, rendering the whole modeling process and its calculations useless.
Want to become a advanced-level financial modeler? then master the fundamentals first! this book gets you started.
P.S. I also highly recommend to anyone just starting with Excel modeling to read William J. Orvis's Excel for Scientists and Engineers. It is a bit outdated but still highly useful for its chapters on curve fitting, VBA programming and raw data manipulation.
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Luria (MSL quote), France
<2006-12-29 00:00>
An INSEAD MBA, I have spent quite a while researching the Institute's library and looking for a good-quality book on valuations and financial modeling. I have found Simon Benninga's book is an absolutely wonderful source of information on financial mathematics, portfolio theory, corporate finance, and related Excel applications applied in modeling and forecasting. Having paged through many a book on the subject, I can honestly state that this one is, probably, the best available in the market. |
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1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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