Corporate Financing and Investing

Course Overview

Businesses maximise shareholder value through short- and long-term financial planning and implementation of rigorous financial techniques. The strategies that apply to the use of capital fall under the purview of corporate finance. This course introduces students to its two core activities: financing—how to raise money—and investing— how to spend that money. Students will learn the essential concepts related to financial modelling, financial instruments and financial markets. They will understand the basics of corporate investment decision-making and analysis, valuation of diverse financial instruments, including debt, equity and derivatives and mechanisms for raising capital. 

After completion of this course, students will be able to understand, identify and analyse corporate investment decisions, manage and quantify their risk and return and understand the role information plays in setting prices for transactions. 

Professor: Raghavendra Rau, Ph.D. 

Professor Rau is the Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Professor of Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School. Professor Rau has taught at a number of universities around the world, including the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences PO), Purdue University, the University of California at Los Angeles and most recently, the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Rau was Principal at Barclays Global Investors, then the largest asset manager in the world, in San Francisco from 2008-2009. He is Co-Editor of Financial Management, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Banking and Finance, the International Review of Finance and the Quarterly Journal of Finance. His research has frequently been covered by the popular press including the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist, among others.

Learning Outcomes



• Describe the investment decisions made by firms
• Identify the best investment opportunity available
• Differentiate between all of the investment choices available
• Quantify risk and return
• Pick investments that maximise return while minimising risk
• Develop the Capital Asset Pricing Model