Operis Senior Consultant Hilary Smart has won 1st Prize in the 16 person final of the ModelOff Financial Modelling World Championships.
The final was held on Sunday 8th December 2013 in New York, with the prize comprising a $30,000 cash sum.
The earlier rounds 1 & 2 each comprised case study based exercises requiring the construction of a financial model, coupled with answering a range of questions on the model’s results.
The Final Round, held behind closed doors over a four hour period, required first constructing a US toll road model, then adding a ‘dashboard’ style output sheet to present the relevant results of the model. To round this off, the final question involved using Excel to determine the optimal solution for a logic oriented puzzle.
Now back in London, Hilary remarked that she was obviously very pleased to have won and felt rather fortunate that the questions mostly involved project finance financial modelling, a real speciality at Operis. She said that she found meeting the other competitors enjoyable, as well as learning about the areas of financial modelling that a number of her rivals look at.
Next on her agenda is taking her colleagues to the pub for celebratory drinks, as a means of thanking them for the help over the years in developing her modelling skills and for the collaborative assistance helping solve complex modelling scenarios. Hilary says “Cheers, guys”.
