experienced financial modeler and risk analyst

Xia(Tracy) Birdsong, CFA

Castle Rock, CO *****

QUALIFICATION HIGHLIGHTS

• Four years experience in financial services industry.

• Unique skill set of quantitative finance development and corporate finance consulting.

• Master of Science degree in Quantitative Financial Economics with solid grounding in probability theory, statistics, linear algebra, and numerical analysis.

• Specialized in the analytics of the structured credit instruments (i.e. modeling of the collateral portfolio, waterfall analysis, and synthetic CDO pricing).

• Deep understanding of financial risk management (i.e. asset pricing, VaR, stress testing, and market data).

• Strong numerical programming skills in Matlab, VBA, FORTRAN and C.

• Strong model build skills in Excel.

• Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Charter holder.

• Bloomberg Certificate for Equity Level-1 and Level-2.

• Proven ability to work in both a team environment and independently.

EMPLOYMENT

Duff & Phelps Corporation March 2007 – January 2009

Senior Associate in Financial Modeling/Corporate Finance Consulting

• Developed strategic planning models in Excel for the client to support various product mixes and business parameters and drivers.

• Assisted clients with refining and analyzing the strategic investment models to evaluate the potential M&A deals and their impact on the business operational cash flows.

• Performed analysis on different financing options under various scenarios and provided the opinion to optimize the debt structure with multiple debt tranches.

• Developed and refined the cost of capital model for various sectors in energy and utility industry. Researched the existing transactions in Capital IQ and Bloomberg to derive the sector averages on costs of equity, costs of debt, beta measurements, and target capital structures used in Tax valuations.

• Performed detailed risk analysis on financial forecast models with the objective of enhanced quality, assurance and sensitivity of models inclusive of varied accounting procedures, scenarios, and flexibility.

XCEL Energy, Inc. Nov 2006 – March 2007

Market Pricing Analyst/Department of Risk Analytics

• Developed a tool to derive hourly prices for commercial electricity trading nodes. The prices are fed into the MarketSym simulation to derive the forward price forecast and provide the benchmark prices for the trading desk.

• Provided daily fair values of gas and power contracts to support daily profit generating transactions of forwards and options; Audited and reviewed daily price changes to ensure risk compliance measures.

• Developed a long-term market valuation/forecast models on gas contracts in option valuations to support asset acquisition/divestiture activities.

• Maintain all models in auditable fashion to support requirements of internal review, regulatory audit and the requirements of accounting standard FAS 133.

RiskMetrics Group July 2004 – Oct 2006

Financial Analytics Test Engineer/QBIT

• Developed the pricing validation model for credit default swaps (CDSs) in the market risk pricing engine. The model uses the credit grade model or the credit default spread model to generate the default probability distribution for the underlying obligor, and calculates the mark-to-market values of CDS.

• Developed the pricing/calibration validation model for collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) in the market risk pricing engine. The model uses the credit grade model or the credit default spread model to generate the default probability distribution for individual obligors, aggregate using the FFT for fast convolution or indexing to arrive at the default probability distribution of the collateral pool, and analyzes the mark-to-market values of different CDOs tranches through expected tranche losses and expected premium payments.

• Developed the analytics validation model for analyzing the sensitivities of CDOs with respect to the fluctuations of the underlying credit spreads. The model stresses both CDO and its underlying CDSs, and summarizes the sensitivities into deltas and gamma for hedging uses.

• Developed the analytics validation model for corporate bond pricing with credit default spread curves. The model assigns the default/survival probabilities to each cash flow and gives a more accurate estimate of bond future value than traditional methodologies.

• Developed the analytics validation model for stressing recovery rate for certain types of instruments, such as bonds, CDOs, CDS, convertible bonds, and CDS Option.

• Analyzed critical client issues, and interacted with the client services group to ensure the issues are resolved in a timely fashion. Accumulated comprehensive knowledge in financial risk management, including asset pricing, stress testing, statistics, and market data, for a wide range of financial instruments.

EDUCATION

Master of Science, Quantitative Financial Economics (MSQFE); Statistics Minor.

Oklahoma State University, 2004. GPA 3.95/4.0

Master of Science, Mechanical Engineering. Oklahoma State University, 2002. GPA: 4.0/4.0.

Bachelor of Science, Thermal Engineering, Tsinghua Univeristy, China, 2000. GPA: 3.3/4.0.

COMPUTER SKILLS

Excel, RiskMetrics Softwares, XML, MatLab, Perl, SAS, S-Plus, Maple, FORTRAN, C, C++, VBA, VB.

HONORS AND ORGANIZATIONS

• Honors Graduate, Oklahoma State University, 2004.

• Williams Scholarship, Oklahoma State University, 2002 ~2004.

• CFA  Scholarship for CFA  exam in June 2004, Oklahoma CFA Society, 2004.

• Financial Management Association.

• Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society.

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