MBA Specialism in Finance

Programme Overview

This module provides individuals with a holistic view of the entirety of corporate finance. At its heart, corporate finance focuses on two basic questions –financing (how to raise money) and investing (how to spend that money). Focusing on six key ideas, almost all of which have won Nobel prizes, students will learn how to find the best ways to answer these two questions. They will apply these ideas to analyse project investment and corporate valuation, the best forms and ways to raise capital, why corporate governance is necessary and how to handle situations where the markets are not efficient.

Programme Overview

In the context of financial decision-making, it is critical that firms identify the opportunities and challenges and position themselves in the market by correctly evaluating and analysing their actual and potential profitability, growth, and development. Firms go throw different stages of development from start-up to survival, growth, and maturity, facing different business markets, and financial challenges and opportunities. Many of the companies that operate in our economic system are micro to small-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), where they were originally founded by entrepreneurs. To understand the development and success or failures of enterprises, it is important to analyse the characteristics and foundation of entrepreneurship and the financial conditions that impact an entrepreneurial venture. 

Understanding entrepreneurial finance is an important part of analysing the potential factors that lead to success and failure and the opportunities and challenges that face small enterprises. One of the ways which allow entrepreneurs to make effective decisions to develop their ventures is to establish a comprehensive structure of analysis that considers finance and financial management. Financing sources is particularly difficult for a small firm due to the high uncertainty about cash flow and future liquidity requirements. Small firms face unique financial problems that overshadow the barriers hindering their survival and growth. 

This course aims to identify the key financial challenges faced by entrepreneurial ventures, which can range from seed and start-up capital to the management of working capital, and the different possible options available to SMEs by financial institutions, and private equity and venture capital. Entrepreneurial Finance combines the basic concepts of entrepreneurship, economics, and finance. 

Programme Overview

Following the international financial crisis of 2007-2008, global businesses and governmental leaders have taken profound measures to change the structure of the financial markets and ensure such a crisis does not happen again. This is the activity of financial regulation, which is the attempt of authorities to control economic risks and the focus of this course in International Financial Regulation. Students will learn about the liberalisation of international financial markets, the development of international regulations in response to crises, and how the most recent watershed has shaped the current global economic environment. The course will equip students with an understanding of key elements in financial regulation, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as well as important historical events, including the Breton Wood Conference of 1944 and the Herstatt Bank failure of 1974. Students will explore the benefits and challenges of liberalisation related to saving and investments, market forces on government action, and the creation of derivative instruments aimed at managing risk, among other relevant topics.