A serious source of information for those looking to reverse engineer business deals
It’s clear from the current turbulence on Wall Street that the inner workings of its most complex transactions are poorly understood. Wall Street deals parse risk using intricate legal terminology that is difficult to translate into an analytical model. Reverse Engineering Deals on Wall Street: A Step-By-Step Guide takes readers through a detailed methodology of deconstructing the public deal documentation of a modern Wall Street transaction and applying the deconstructed elements to create a fully dynamic model that can be used for risk and investment analysis.

Appropriate for the current market climate, an actual residential mortgage backed security (RMBS) transaction is taken from prospectus to model by the end of the book. Step by step, Allman walks the reader through the reversing process with textual excerpts from the prospectus and discussions on how it directly transfers to a model. Each chapter begins with a discussion of concepts with exact references to an example prospectus, followed by a section called "Model Builder," in which Allman translates the theory into a fully functioning model for the example deal. Also included is valuable VBA code and detailed explanation that shows proper valuation methods including loan level amortization and full trigger modeling.

Aside from investment analysis this text can help anyone who wants to keep track of the competition, learn from others public transactions, or set up a system to audit one’s own models.