Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Michael Rees succeeds to a large extent in his endeavor of writing a text that addresses the financial modeling process instead of Excel functionality, financial theory, or mathematical models. To his credit, Rees has put together a large number of useful modeling examples in the CD-ROM that is sold with the text. Rees' book assumes that readers have at least an intermediate knowledge of both statistical and financial concepts.
After reviewing select Excel functions and tools relevant to financial modeling, Rees gives his audience of modelers many practical tips about how to design, structure, and build models that are relevant, accurate, and easily understandable. Whoever has experience with models will probably agree with Rees when he writes that the majority of models built are in practice of mediocre quality. Someone other than the author of the model will often experience several challenges in dealing with the model at hand, i.e., too much time spent on understanding the model, complexity of the auditing and validating processes, hard to share with others, over-reliance on the original modeler to maintain or use it, lack of clarity of objectives, and presence of errors and implicit assumptions.
Rees then goes into the modeling of financial statements that is often required in the world of corporate finance for forecasting profit and cash, assessing financing requirements, analyzing credit risk and valuation, etc. This chapter is a little gem. It contains many practical tips. Once again, readers will be reminded that there is not always 100% agreement on the definition of some financial concepts.
Rees then uses Palisade Corporation's add-ins @RISK and PrecisionTree for many modeling examples in the two chapters that he dedicates to risk modeling and real option modeling, respectively. Having some understanding of both statistical and financial concepts is particularly important here to benefit from reading both chapters. Probably, many readers with an advanced knowledge of Excel 2007 will regret that the above-mentioned functionality that Palisade Corporation offers has not yet been systematically integrated into at least Microsoft Office Professional.
Finally, Rees discusses the use of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in a range of practical financial modeling situations. Rees points out that many otherwise competent modelers never learn VBA. For this reason, Rees makes the assumption that his audience is not very familiar with VBA. Rees shows how macros, i.e., subroutines and user-defined functions, can be used in a variety of modeling contexts.
In conclusion, Rees has made a valuable contribution to the field of financial modeling. The CD-ROM that is sold with the text plays a key role in achieving this objective.
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