Core courses

Core courses introduce you to the necessary theories and tools you need to master before proceeding with the master electives. core courses cover the cornerstones of modern financial decision-making.

 Corporate Finance  
This course will provide you with a better understanding of corporate finance and value creation. The firm’s capital structure is our main point of departure in this course. In the first part, we discuss the role of agency problems, asymmetric information, and the incentives provided by shareholders and creditors to management, from a theoretical perspective. In the second part, we discuss empirical evidence on the value impact of specific capital structure decisions. 

 Investments 
This course deals with financial decision-making from an investor’s perspective. The course focuses on the fundamental principles of risk and return, diversification, asset allocation and efficient markets, and develops knowledge in market trading structures, equity and fixed income securities, portfolio performance strategies, and evaluation methods. The course extends your knowledge of Modern Portfolio Theory, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, the Arbitrage Pricing Theory and stock return predictability. Furthermore, it covers fixed income markets and the term structure of interest rates. You will learn how to employ these models in the real world using actual stock and bond market data. 

 Risk Management  
This core course deals with the management of financial risk and return from the viewpoint of financial institutions, international investors and corporate firms. Various potential sources of risk are studied, including market risk, credit risk and operational risk, as well as alternative approaches to measure and control risk. The course teaches you how to apply risk management in an organisation, using the concepts of hedging, insurance, risk budgeting, and risk adjusted performance measurement. Particular attention is paid to the application and valuation of derivative instruments, such as futures and options. During the course, we analyse a number of cases where risk management failed in practice. 

 Ethics and Corporate Governance  
This course starts with financial market ethics, which is the fundamental study of norms and values of financial market participants (investors, analysts and managers) and the way in which social norms and values can be reconciled with these financial and corporate ones. The course also includes corporate governance, where several topics are discussed, such as the role of large shareholders, the market for corporate control and the role of boards in governance. This course is offered in cooperation with the Department of Business-Society Management. 

 M&A and Restructuring 
This course discusses how companies can create value in strategic decision-making. The most prominent decision is a merger or acquisition. However, firms can also become more efficient through restructurings. In particular, we will discuss motives and value implications of mergers and acquisitions, asset sales, equity carve-outs and spin-offs. In the second part, the course offers approaches to using financial statement information for discounted cash flow valuation purposes. These valuation models serve as a tool in strategic decision-making. 

 Financial Analysis 
In this course, we show how information in financial statements can be used to value business organisations. First, the course focuses on accounting-based measures of value creation, namely residual income and abnormal earnings growth. These accounting-based models are relevant valuation methods. Second, the course zooms in on approaches to using financial statement information for discounted cash flow valuation purposes. Students will apply their gained knowledge in a practical case when valuing an exchange-listed company. This course is offered by the Department of Accounting and Control.