Real Estate Initiative - Courses- Related Courses

Faculty

Paul Simko, Frank M. Sands Sr. Associate Professor of Business Administration

Course Description

This course is designed to provide a foundation for developing an understanding of the interpretation, screening, forecasting, and valuation tools that help one analyze information in corporate financial reports. The course includes but is not limited to topics related to understanding assessments of earnings quality, predicting financial distress, the use of ratio analysis, and the use of earnings-based valuation models as complements to more conventional discounted cash flow models.

The course is expected to help solidify and integrate core concepts from other finance and accounting courses, particularly the FY core ACC course, the FY ACC elective, and the corporate valuation modules in the FMP courses. Prerequisites are not required, but a solid understanding of accounting financial statements is expected. The FY core ACC course meets this need.

The course should benefit students planning careers in security analysis, investment banking, financial management or corporate finance. The course should also be beneficial to those interested in developing their own framework for using accounting data in their own investment decisions.

Course Objectives

• Strengthening students understanding of the accounting framework.
• Application of detailed ratio analysis for a variety of purposes, including using accounting data to provide a historical perspective on firm activities, assessing current profitability, and predicting financial distress.
• Development of detailed and complete financial statement forecasting techniques
• Understanding the application and links across common valuation techniques, including discounted cash flow, multiples, and earnings based valuation methods.
• Identification and interpretation of unique accounting factors that may affect the evaluation of company, including adjustments for off-balance sheet assets, understated liabilities, evaluating earnings accretion, and identifying potential earnings management.

Faculty

Richard Evans, Professor of Business Administration and Donald McLean Wilkinson Research Chair in Business Administration

Course Description

This course will provide students with an understanding of the theory and practice of investment decision making. The course is divided into three modules: asset allocation, manager selection, and market frictions. The first module examines the decision of how to allocate a portfolio across different asset classes (e.g., stocks, bonds, real estate). Using the tools developed in modern portfolio theory, students will examine the trade-off between risk and return, the optimization of the risk-return trade-off for a portfolio, and the role of forecasting expected returns in designing an optimal portfolio. The second module explores the process of selecting portfolio managers for the different asset classes included in the portfolio. Students will use the CAPM and multifactor performance models to analyze manager performance and select the best managers. The third module examines market frictions that impact performance and consequently, should be considered in the asset allocation and manager selection decisions. These frictions include manager incentives and risk taking, market liquidity, trading costs, and taxes. While the course is designed for students whose career interests lie in the field of investment management, the topics covered and tools developed in the course will be useful for personal investment as well. Valuation in Financial Markets is a prerequisite for this course.

Course Objectives

• Teach students a framework for assessing the risk and corresponding return for investments in equities and fixed-income securities.
• Allow students to confront a variety of challenging investment issues that require them to identify acceptable alternatives, assess the opportunities and risks; make decisions; and defend those decisions.
• Provide students whose career interests lie in the field of investment management and research with a solid foundation for pursuing this goal.

Faculty

George (Yiorgos) Allayanis, Robert F. Bruner Distinguished Professor of Business Administration

Course Description

This course examines Mergers and Acquisitions from multiple perspectives: strategic, tactical, financial, tax, legal, corporate governance, etc., thus providing a full picture of the complexity arising during an M&A transaction. The course discusses how to structure a deal and why: how to parse risks among buyer and seller, deal with potential anti-trust issues, and account for strategic and governance forces which may add to the probability of success in an M&A deal. Besides case studies and practitioner-expert presentations the course asks students to research a failed deal and provide learnings in the classroom. The course is important for students interested in Investment Banking, Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Consulting, Corporate Finance as well as General Management. M&A is a fundamental way to grow a business and inevitably business leaders will encounter M&A in their professional lives.

Course Objectives

• Understand the complexity of an M&A transaction and the various aspects impacting the success -strategic, legal, financial, etc.
• Understand the various risks arising in a deal and how to use tools to distribute them among buyer and seller

Faculty

Michael Schill, Sponsors Professor of Business Administration

Ian Appel, Associate Professor of Business Administration Academic Director of Richard A. Mayo Center for Asset Management John G. Macfarlane Family Chair

Pedro Matos, James A. and Stacy Cooper Bicentennial Professor of Business Administration

Course Description

This course extends the fundamentals of financial asset and firm valuation examined in the required First-Year Financial Management and Policies course by exploring more complex valuation techniques and financial engineering applications. The course is organized across three modules. The first module introduces the partitioning of total firm cash flow across different claimants such as cash flow to debt holders or equity holders that is relevant for deals where specific financing matters such as project financing or leveraged buyouts. The second module examines fixed income markets and explores fixed income derivatives such as interest rate forward and swap contracts, emphasizing arbitrage-based valuation approaches. The third module investigates options markets with a focus on the fundamentals of valuing option contracts and hybrid securities. The course seeks to prepare students for careers in finance and to provide valuation skills employed in other finance elective courses.

Course Objectives

• To develop student understanding of partitioned cash flow valuation, derivative securities, and financial engineering applications.
• To prepare students for careers in finance including investment banking, corporate finance, and financial markets.