48144 - Corporate Finance

Academic Year 2019/2020

  • Moduli: Massimiliano Barbi (Modulo 1) Marco Bigelli (Modulo 2)
  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures (Modulo 1) Traditional lectures (Modulo 2)
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Business and Economics (cod. 8965)

Learning outcomes

At the completion of the course, students will be equipped with the fundamental concepts of financial management. This includes the ability to understand the firm’s governance, and to assess the impact of investing, financing, and risk management decisions on the firm’s market value, in a classical shareholder’s wealth maximization framework.

Course contents

Corporate Finance (48144) will provide students with an overview of financial decision making within a firm. The course focusses on decisions concerning how firms should raise funds in different forms, and how they should invest these funds in real assets. The first part of the course will deal with investment decisions, that is how to value investment projects and companies, while the second part will consider how to finance these investments. The final part of the course will examine how investment and financing decisions are related. In essence, the course is aimed at providing students with a thorough understanding of how financial decisions can create, destroy, or modify shareholder’s value.

Readings/Bibliography

The textbook for the course is the following.

- Brealey, R.A., Myers, S.C., and F. Allen, 2019, Principles of Corporate Finance, 13/e, McGraw-Hill.

A compact version of the textbook, including only the chapters we will cover during the course, is available with the following ISBN: 9781307465495.

Additional readings may be assigned by the instructors as the course progresses.

Teaching methods

Traditional lectures and classes.

Assessment methods

The assessment of the course will be based on a midterm and a final exam. The structure of both tests is the same. Each of them will include 5 multiple choice questions (1 point each), 1 exercise (8 points), and 1 short answer question (3 points) to be answered in 50 minutes. The midterm (final) will be based on the first (last) 10 class sessions. Both class tests will be in the form of a closed-book exam, and no textbooks or notes will be allowed. The final grade of the course will be the sum of the grades of the 2 class tests. The highest score is 16 in both the midterm and the final, therefore the maximum overall grade is 32 (if greater than 30, it will be considered as 30 with honours). Please note that to be admitted to the class tests (both the midterm and the final) students must register themselves via Almaesami. Booking the exam session is mandatory to sit the exams and no exceptions to this directive will be made.

Teaching tools

Lecture slides and additional readings which may be assigned by the instructors as the course progresses.

Office hours

See the website of Massimiliano Barbi

See the website of Marco Bigelli

SDGs

Decent work and economic growth

This teaching activity contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.