Financial Modeling

 Too often, finance courses stop short of making a connection between textbook finance and the problems of real-world business. Financial Modeling bridges this gap between theory and practice by providing a nuts-and-bolts guide to solving common financial models with spreadsheets. Simon Benninga takes the reader step by step through each model, showing how it can be solved using Microsoft Excel. The long-awaited third edition of this standard text maintains the "cookbook" features and Excel dependence that have made the first and second editions so popular. It also offers significant new material, with new chapters covering such topics as bank valuation, the Black-Litterman approach to portfolio optimization, Monte Carlo methods and their applications to option pricing, and using array functions and formulas. Other chapters, including those on basic financial calculations, portfolio models, calculating the variance-covariance matrix, and generating random numbers, have been revised, with many offering substantially new and improved material. Other areas covered include financial statement modeling, leasing, standard portfolio problems, value at risk (VaR), real options, duration and immunization, and term structure modeling. Technical chapters treat such topics as data tables, matrices, the Gauss-Seidel method, and tips for using Excel. The last section of the text covers the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) techniques needed for the book. The accompanying CD contains Excel worksheets and solutions to end-of-chapter exercises.

Review: For the 2nd Edition: "Benninga has a clear writing style and uses numerous illustrations, which make this book one of the best texts on using Excel for finance that I've seen." Ed McCarthy Ticker Magazine For the 2nd Edition: "The author describes this as a 'cookbook' and that is a good analogy... Its breadth is extensive, covering simple present valuing and cost of capital... to the likes of real options and early exercise of American-style options... A worthwhile acquisition." Paul Dentskevitch Risk Magazine