MBA and Sloan Elective Courses: Finance
FINANCE 319. Private Equity Investing Seminar
This seminar focuses on private equity investing, including venture capital. Private equity and venture capital are increasingly important activities. This seminar explores selected topics in private equity investing for those MBA students who take the prerequisite course FINANCE 321, Investment Management and Entrepreneurial Finance. Private equity includes both established and early stage companies. The course extends and deepens the entrepreneurial finance area for those with an interest in private equity, venture capital and principal investing—taking a global view. Utilization will be made of original case studies and lecture-discussions, building on the framework of FINANCE 321. The Seminar meets with outstanding investors.
FINANCE 320. Debt Markets
This course is intended for those who plan careers that may involve trading or investing in debt instruments and their derivatives, including money-market instruments, government bonds, repurchase agreements, interest-rate swaps, mortgage-backed securities (MBS), corporate bonds, and credit derivatives. We will emphasize trading, pricing, and hedging. Most lectures will start with a cold-called student presentation of an un-graded short homework calculation. There will also be a series of graded homework, and about five 30-minute graded pop quizzes. A small number of case studies will be used as vehicles to discuss the trading or risk management of debt portfolios.
FINANCE 321. Investment Management and Entrepreneurial Finance
Equity investment in companies, common stocks, early stage ventures, deals, partnerships, hedge funds, or other entrepreneurial opportunities will be immediately or eventually important for most MBAs. This investment course discusses many practical and conceptual factors influencing the value of companies and deals ? both publicly listed and private equity investments and on success of investment approaches. The focus of this course is on quoted and private equity investments and on entrepreneurial finance. The format of the class is primarily case discussions led by the professor and principals who were involved in the case. This course enables MBA students to learn a broad investing skill-set and to study outstanding investors.
FINANCE 323. International Financial Management
This course provides students with a framework for making corporate financial decisions in an international context. The course will discuss a spectrum of topics in the area of international financial management. Our focus will be on the markets for spot exchange, currency forwards, options, swaps, international bonds, and international equities. For each of these markets, we will study the valuation of instruments traded in these markets and, through cases, the application of these instruments to the following corporate decisions: (i) managing exposure to exchange rates, (ii) financing in international capital markets, and (iii) international capital budgeting.
FINANCE 324. Corporate Finance
The main aim of this course is to enable you to apply the fundamental ideas of financial economics to the problems in the area of corporate finance with all the complexities the real world entails. The main focus of this course is on the corporate financial manager and how he/she reaches decisions as to capital investments, dividends and financing of all sorts. We will cover many issues that are important to a modern financial manager including such topics as leveraged buyouts, hostile takeovers, private equity financing and venture capital, and financial distress. Through cases and discussions of topical issues, the course will give you the opportunity to analyze practical financial situations and problems, on the assumption that you are already familiar with basic concepts from the core course FINANCE 220 (valuation, CAPM, capital structure, option pricing). The course is thus applied, but within a rigorous theoretical framework.The cases will be used to motivate our discussion of how to bridge the gap between rigorous finance theory and its application to practical problems in corporate finance. The cases and our discussion will embrace both "the big picture" and rigorous financial analysis.
FINANCE 325. Topics in Corporate Finance
This course both extends and deepens the materials covered in FINANCE 324, Corporate Finance. Major topic areas include: market discipline and acquisitions (the market for corporate control); leveraged buy outs; divestitures including such things as spin-offs, equity carveouts, split-offs, and tracking stocks; and distress restructuring. The central theme of the course is value creation, transfer, and destruction. The course will be conducted on a "quasi seminar" basis, so enrollment is limited. Cases deal with applications, and approximately 60% of the sessions involve case discussions for at least part of the session. Full lecture, mini lectures on a variety of topics, and guest speakers fill out the menu. Prerequisite: FINANCE 324 or experience and/or course work that covers costs of capital, capital structure, dividend policy, short-, intermediate- and long-term financing, including convertible securities, and financial analysis and forecasting (pro-forma and other forecasting devices). This course assumes such background and should be considered advanced.
FINANCE 329. Investment Seminar
Investment Seminar "Global Principal Investing" is a seminar on selected topics in masterful investing in publicly traded and private equity/venture capital investments, with focus on the principal’s point of view. We study hedge funds and meet with outstanding investors. The scope is global. The Seminar is taught by a founding director of the largest international investment fund. The prerequisite is FINANCE 321, Investment Management and Entrepreneurial Finance.
FINANCE 330. Investment Management: Asset Allocation and Asset/Manager Selection
This course covers strategic and tactical asset allocation in investment portfolios as well as specific asset and manager selection.We consider challenges that are unique to the various asset classes that comprise broad-based portfolios, including: public equities, fixed income securities, private equity (both buyout and venture capital), hedge funds, and real assets (real estate, energy, timber, and commodities).We also consider challenges that are specific to various geographies (domestic versus developed international versus emerging markets) across the various asset classes.The portfolio optimization framework employed considers the perspective of different types of investors that vary along such dimensions as risk preference, liquidity preference/investment horizon, tax status, social objectives, and special asset-specific relationship, information or skill advantages.
FINANCE 335. Corporate Valuation, Governance and Behavior
This course will develop a detailed knowledge of corporate valuation techniques, together with an understanding of the important role of asymmetric information, agency conflicts and behavioral considerations in understanding corporate financing decisions. After developing these frameworks and tools and highlighting their general importance, they will then be applied to a wide range of corporate finance applications. Among the possible applications to be considered are mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, financial distress, IPOs, and venture financing.For all of these applications, as well as others, this course will first emphasize the central importance of valuation, as well as the unique challenges to valuation posed by the particular application.Then, employing these techniques of valuation, the course will analyze the importance of asymmetric information, agency conflicts and behavioral considerations in understanding observed phenomenon associated with each application, and the role each of these considerations play in guiding optimal decision making.
FINANCE 522. Financial Intermediaries and Capital Markets
This course focuses on financial markets, institutions, and instruments. We consider when and how firms raise capital through the life cycle, beginning with the capital-raising decisions and transactions for young firms and then discussing the decisions facing older, listed firms. We concentrate mainly on the firm’s perspective while also considering the perspective of financial intermediaries. Issues to be considered in this course include the role of financial intermediaries like commercial banks and investment banks, the decision to go public, the pricing and role of investment banks in IPOs, bank debt, public debt, private placements, commercial paper, and markets for junk bonds.
FINANCE 530. Financial Modeling
The course will take the perspective of a mid-level manager or decision-maker who is responsible for collecting, analyzing, and utilizing financial information in the context of a major transaction. The class will integrate theories presented throughout courses in the core, particularly accounting and finance. In addition to providing an important context for application of these theories, the seminar will also incorporate various methodologies that will enhance a manager?s ability to develop and review financial models. Students will work on a series of cases and build models that can be used for earnings and pro-forma financial statement forecasts, valuation, the assessment of financing needs, merger analysis, and LBO evaluation. Students will also gain experience presenting financial models and critically assessing them. By the conclusion of the course, students will develop the skills to construct complex financial models and the logical frameworks to utilize them for various organizational applications.
