Content, progress and pedagogy of the module

This module provides an introduction to the fundamentals of finance, emphasizing their application to a wide variety of real-world situations. It aims to provide students with an understanding of the role of finance in business; the nature of available financial instruments and determinants of the prices of marketable securities; investment appraisal decisions, risk management methods, and capital structure. All of these topics are studied in the context of effective financial management, corporate governance and business ethics.

During the module students will learn about long-term financial strategies, basic security valuation principles, basics of company valuation, effective investment decisions, bond pricing, cost of capital and capital asset pricing, corporate governance and ethics, basics of financial risk management, and the impact of digitalisation in the financial services industry. Theoretical material covered in class will be combined with desktop analytics, web and mobile applications to expose students to the real-life scenarios and applications. Finance theories, tools and techniques discussed in the course can be utilized in any management decision-making process in any business sector.

This module provides an introduction to the theory and practice of finance and so provides a foundation for a more in-depth study of different aspects of finance in the MSc programme.

Learning objectives

Knowledge

The objective is that the student after the module possesses the necessary knowledge on:

• main foundational concepts in corporate finance, such as NPV, Time value of money, risk return tradeoff, cost of capital, capital budgeting, asset valuation, among others.
• the characteristics of the financial resources used by corporations and the factors that go into a firm’s most critical decision making.
• the impact of financial structure on firm value and the importance of corporate governance and ethics on firm performance.

Skills

The objective is that the student after the module possesses the necessary skills in:

• applying basic valuation models to determine value of financial securities, and evaluating the viability of capital investments using appropriate appraisal techniques.
• understanding the debt markets, instruments and the risks associated with such investments; calculating risk and returns to optimize investments, and assessing the right set of financial information to achieve better returns for a firm.
• identifying issues usually addressed by corporate governance structures and formulating finance decisions aimed at delivering returns to shareholders.

Competences

The objective is that the student after the module possesses the necessary competences in:

• logical thinking, critical analysis, analysing investment, financing, strategic corporate decisions.
• identifying various sources of finance for organisations and applying various analytical frameworks and techniques used for financial and risk management in business.
• using the major financial theories as a framework for real world business analysis.

Type of instruction

For information see § 17.

Exam

Exams