Do you want to understand the financial press?

Do you want to start a career in finance?

Or do you want to improve your knowledge to become an expert in how to create stakeholder value?

This course will make sure that you can respond to the answers positively in a very fast pace!

Being able to assess whether an investment project is worth executing, it is of crucial importance to master the right techniques.When the investment project is another company to be taken over, failing to making a proper analysis could destroy substantial value.

This course includes 10 chapters in the areas of corporate investments:

1. Goals and governance of the firm

   1. Investment vs financing decisions

   2. Role of the financial manager

   3. The investment trade-off

   4. Economic rents and competitive advantage

      
      

2. The investment decision

   1. Positive NPV-rule (including constant growth perpetuity and annuity calculations)

   2. Estimation of free cash flows

   3. Estimation of the discount rate

      1. Weighted average cost of capital

      2. Project WACC vs. company WACC

      3. Capital structure decisions

      4. Cost of debt

      5. Cost of equity

         1. Capital assets pricing model (CAPM)

         2. Markowitz' mean-variance approach

         3. Estimating and interpreting beta

         4. Arbitrage pricing theory

         5. Fama and French (1992) free-factor model

         6. Carhart (1997) four-factor model

   4. Why financing decisions matter

   5. Taking inflation into account

   6. sensitivity checks, scenario analysis and simulations

      
      

3. Agency problems

   1. Agency problems of equity

   2. Agency problems of debt

      1. Overinvestment problem

      2. Underinvestment problem

         
         

4. Other investment techniques

   1. Present value index

   2. Profitability index

   3. Accounting rate of return

   4. Internal rate of return

   5. Method of the typical year

   6. Payback period

   7. iscounted payback period

      
      

5. Economic value added and market value added

   1. EVA

   2. MVA

   3. Comparing EVA, MVA and NPV

      
      

6. Valuing bonds and the theory of interest rates

   1. Corporate vs government bonds

   2. Valuing a simple bond

   3. Term structure of interest rates

   4. Credit risk driving yields

      
      

7. Valuing companies

   1. Book value vs.market value vs.intrinsic value

   2. Comparable companies approach

   3. Dividend discount model

   4. Discounted cash flow model

   5. Capital structure theories

      1. Trade-off theory

      2. Pecking-order theory

      3. Jensen's FCF theory

      4. Behavioral finance theories

   6. Financial slack

   7. WACC in case of multiple sources of financing

   8. Adjusted present value approach

      
      

8. Financial benchmarks

   1. Importance for coporate finance analyses

   2. The benchmark ecosystem

   3. Regulation

   4. Euribor and Eonia as well as their reforms

   5. Alternative RFRs

      
      

9. Private equity, venture capital and buyout investments

   1. Definition

   2. Venture capital vs.buyouts

   3. Types of buyouts (leverage buyouts, management buyouts, secondary buyouts, family buyouts, divisional buyouts, etc.)

   4. Syndication of buyout investors

   5. Buyouts: value creation?

      
      

10. Real options analysis

    1. Difference with traditional investment analysis

    2. Financial options analysis

    3. Valuation using the Black & Scholes formula

    4. Value of a company

    5. Binomial models (method of the replicating portfolio, neutral probabilities approach, etc.)

    6. Disadvantages of real options analysis

Each of the chapters contains examples and practical advantages and challenges are discussed.