Lynch Financial Modelling

picture of Penelope Lynch

With almost forty years experience in cash flow modelling for project finance, Dr Penelope Lynch provides a full range of project finance modelling consultancy and training services. She has been working as an independednt consultant since 1992, after 12 years with investment banks in the City of London, modelling project and export finance deals primarily in the energy, power, infrastructure and telecoms sectors.

Summary of Experience

Penny Lynch has been involved in financial modelling for project finance since 1981, when she joined the financial modelling team at Morgan Grenfell. At that time modelling was done on an ICL mainframe computer, kept in a basement in Tabernacle street. Models were coded in a language written in-house using FORTRAN, and model results produced on dot matrix printers. Reams of perforated computer paper were carried to the more up-market offices on Great Winchester Street and Throgmorton Avenue.

Once PC's and spreadsheets were introduced to the bank, all further project models were developed using this exciting new medium, and during the remainder of her eight years at Morgan Grenfell Penny wrote spreadsheet models for numerous energy and project-finance deals, including (inevitably!) a Turkish BOT power plant, a number of road and tunnel bids and a Trinidadian Gas field development. By the time she left, at the end of 1988, Penny had moved from the specialist financial modelling group, spent time working within the energy group, and finally became a full-time member of the project finance advisory team.

Recruited to the Project and Export Credit advisory team at Chase Investment bank in 1988, she continued to build her modelling skills and experience over the next four years. Work for Chase included modelling for (another) two Turkish BOT power stations, and a telecom satellite financing, as well as giving training and support in modelling for new team members. In 1992, she left the heady delights of international banking to pursue the scary but more interesting occupation of self-employed consultant.

Since setting up LFM in 1992, Penny has worked on a wide range of modelling assignments for a variety of clients. Her banking background has proved helpful to sponsors seeking to model their deals in a format which will ultimately be acceptable to potential lenders. Her long experience of working with project finance spreadsheets has proved helpful to banks and consultancies confronted with complex and impenetrable models which need to be understood and evaluated quickly. Her carefully structured approach to modelling, developed over decades, has proved helpful to multiple clients seeking to introduce improved and consistent modelling practices to their organisations.

In 1997 Penny was commissioned by Euromoney to write the first textbook on Project Finance Modelling. Updated in 2011, the book is still available and continues to provide a practical guide for new and experienced modellers.

Penny has a 1st class hons BSC in Mathematical Sciences, studied part-time with the OU between 1998 and 2003. She completed a PhD in mathematical modelling in 2013, also studied in what she laughably refers to as 'spare time', with the OU.