Corporate Finance
A.Y. 2020/2021
Learning objectives
The course aims at providing knowledge of the financial aspects of an enterprise or corporation in order to enable students to assess its prospects, estimate its value, understand the process for deciding the investments underpinning its growth, judge the best way to source funds for such investments, understand hedging and payout decisions, all in the context of the financial and institutional environment in which firms operate.
Expected learning outcomes
At the end of the course the student knows a corporation's accounts explaining how the main internal governance and external environment issues are interrelated and how they can best be analyzed to gauge the health, prospects and value of a business. Specifically, the student knows the time value of money, the cost of capital and the identification of the appropriate discount or hurdle rate, the main decision criteria such as IRR, NPV, repayment period, capital structure and distribution policies and the main issues involved in the decision to hedge risk through futures and options.
Lesson period: Third trimester
Assessment methods: Esame
Assessment result: voto verbalizzato in trentesimi
Single course
This course cannot be attended as a single course. Please check our list of single courses to find the ones available for enrolment.
Course syllabus and organization
Single session
Lesson period
Third trimester
In case classrooms can't be used, lectures will be delivered synchronously online through MS Teams at the originally scheduled times. Recordings of the lectures will be available through Microsoft Stream, while the slides used in the lectures will be posted each time in Ariel, where students will also find teaching material such as spreadsheets, documentation, suggested readings and special web sites
Course syllabus
The course is based on the textbook "Corporate Finance", by Berk and DeMarzo, 5th Global Edition (Pearson, 2020). A detailed table with the chapters/sections and their sequence to be covered as a maximum program goal will be uploaded to Ariel at the beginning of the course. In synthesis the course aims to cover:
- the corporation, its governance and its financial statements
- how to move monetary values in time: compounding and discounting; interest rates and why they change; the formulas for special flows (perpetuities and annuities)
- bonds and their characteristics
- financial markets and the estimation of the cost of capital of a corporation through the Capital Assets Pricing Model
- capital budgeting and the evaluation of investment projects
- a company's value and capital structure in an idealized world: the Modigliani-Miller propositions
- debt, taxes, costs and benefits of indebtedness, financial stress and default risks
- evaluating investments financed with debt
- choices in how to reward shareholders
- ways of stabilizing cash flow
- the corporation, its governance and its financial statements
- how to move monetary values in time: compounding and discounting; interest rates and why they change; the formulas for special flows (perpetuities and annuities)
- bonds and their characteristics
- financial markets and the estimation of the cost of capital of a corporation through the Capital Assets Pricing Model
- capital budgeting and the evaluation of investment projects
- a company's value and capital structure in an idealized world: the Modigliani-Miller propositions
- debt, taxes, costs and benefits of indebtedness, financial stress and default risks
- evaluating investments financed with debt
- choices in how to reward shareholders
- ways of stabilizing cash flow
Prerequisites for admission
To proceed smoothly with the course of corporate finance, students must have acquired some basic competence in the following disciplines: financial accounting, algebra, statistics, and financial economics.
Teaching methods
The course will run to 20 lessons of 2 hours each, two lessons per week maximum. Lectures will be delivered with the help of PowerPoint slides that will be made available to students and will also include exercises, examples of practical applications of the notions learned and illustrations from real cases and events
Teaching Resources
The course is based on the textbook "Corporate Finance", by Berk and DeMarzo, 5th Global Edition (Pearson, 2020). Other course material such as spreadsheets containing financial computations and reference material on financial markets and instruments will be progressively uploaded in Ariel.
Assessment methods and Criteria
During the course students will go through two ungraded classroom assignments in order to become familiar with the kind of questions they will face in the final exam.
After the end of the course students will take a two-hours written final examination in which they will have to answer questions involving financial calculations and/or multiple choice questions. The score obtained will be the basis for the final grade.
Should it not be possible to hold the final in a classroom, the exam will be delivered through the Exam.net platform and will be shorter.
After the end of the course students will take a two-hours written final examination in which they will have to answer questions involving financial calculations and/or multiple choice questions. The score obtained will be the basis for the final grade.
Should it not be possible to hold the final in a classroom, the exam will be delivered through the Exam.net platform and will be shorter.
SECS-P/09 - CORPORATE FINANCE - University credits: 6
Lessons: 40 hours
Professor:
Molajoni Pierluigi