what career spends a moajority of their time building financial models?

[MrSmart]

@bromion

Ok, now I know Mr. Smart has no experience in the industry. You don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground.

Wow, what a counter-argument. I have been destroyed.

[cgrady40]

@cgrady40

is it possible to get into quant/risk management with CFA/FRM?

i know financial engineering masters would be the route to go. undergrad was finance with highest level of math only calculus.

i’m working my way through financial computing with excel and vba and havent run into any problems yet. Will my background DQ immediately? I would have to take a full time years worth of math courses to get into a qunat MSC program

anybody?

[mlwl8521]

While the original question may appeared foolish/naive, it was at least well intentioned and I just learned a ton of career stuff from 5 of you forum veterans. Good to have you all around.

I’m glad he asked it.

[Viceroy]

@Mobius_Strip

What are you all talking about, no modeling on the buyside?

When you finance an acquisition of a portfolio company with debt, you need to take manegement’s forecast, do your heavy diligence, scrub it, prepare a pro-forma post-transaction financial model that shows your target leverage and send it to the bankers to negotiate the deal financing terms and covenant levels. The banks won’t syndicate a $200M credit facility at 7x EBITDA based on your gut feeling for the industry.

You’ll do the same extensive modeling when you refi to do a dividend recap for your fund, and later when it’s time to exit and sell your portfolio company.

Perhaps the stock screening process for a hedge fund that invests in public equity and debt markets is modeling-light, but in most PE shops you will build quite detailed financial models. And why wouldn’t you - you have all the proprietary, non-public info and unlimited access to management.

You are talking from a banking / leverage finance / LBO perspective.

I agree, obviously leveraged transactions need models.

The people on this thread are talking about publicly listed shares.

[Prophecy]

This is a nice thread. You model light and don’t like technicals, so what do you do? Ini mini miny moe?