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Syllabus

EN IT

Learning Objectives

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
The course analyses corporate finance issues related to measuring the hurdle rates, select the best financing option and identify the proper divided policy. Students will be able to understand strategic and practical investment/debt issues and to implement (through excel) standard capital budgeting technique and financial debt planning policy. Students will learn ho to measure the value of a company for an investment strategy.

KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING:
The student will understand the issues to the financial planning and the impact of the financial choice on the performance of the firm and to construct a report on the value of the company. The analysis will underline the role of market imperfections in the selection of investment opportunities and the issues related to constructing the optimal portfolio.

APPLYING KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING:
Main skills that a student is expected to have at the end of the course are:
1. Defining the hurdle rate for different types of investment
2. Measuring the investment return
3. Identify the best financial structure and the strategy of adjustment to the target leverage
4. Evaluate existing and expected investments in order to identify the proper divided policy
At the end of the course, students will be able to consider the impact of behavioural finance issues and ESG principles on investment and financing choices.

MAKING JUDGEMENTS:
Students will be able to identify key information necessary for a financial evaluation of an investment opportunity and select among different types of financial solutions available and to write a report on the value of the company.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS:
Students will be able to analyse a summarize financial data for an investment opportunity and construct and present reports that summarize the key information necessary for a financial strategy decision.

LEARNING SKILLS:
Students are expected to learn how to use excel tools for analysing investment opportunities and selecting less expensive financing solutions starting from real market data. During the course students will learn how to access and download data from the main financial databases.

Prerequisites

Students are required to have basic knowledge of mathematical finance (interest rate and present value) and balance sheet analysis (Financial Statement) and excel
Students that do not have such skills will have some video-lectures on the moodle platform that they are expected to follow before the starting for the course.

Program

- Corporate finance and corporate governance
- Risk measuring and behavioral finance issues
- Risk free rate and rating
- Equity risk premium and behavioural issues
- Measuring Risk parameters: historical, fundamental and accounting approach
- Cost of debt and hybrid securities
- Weighted Average Cost of Capital
- Cash Flow Forecast: measurement and time weighted average
- Cash Flow risk and probabilistic approaches
- Financial structure principles and trade-off theory
- Life cycle, comparable analysis and financial strategy
- Target leverage and speed of adjustment
- Dividend policy and other remuneration instruments
- Dividend matrix and peer group analysis
- Firm valuation principles and methodology
- Real data analysis and firm value
- Relative valuation: multiple selection and outliers analysis techniques
- Special cases of company valuation

Books

Damodaran A. (2014), Applied Corporate Finance, Wiley

Bibliography

Textbook, slides, video-lectures, excel files and other materials will be available on the course website.

Teaching methods

Lectures, online video lectures and training sessions

Exam Rules

The exam will be computer based and the test is made up of two parts: a written test and an oral test.

I° - Written test)
12 multiple choices
Score for each test equal to 1 if the answer is correct and zero otherwise
2 Open questions
Up to 5 point for each open question
Grading scale:
0 if not answered or out of topic
1-2 if the answer demonstrates just sufficient knowledge and understanding of the arguments with possible generalizations and imperfections
3-4 Fair knowledge and understanding of the topics good skills of analysis and synthesis with arguments expressed in a rigorous way but with a language that is not always appropriate / technical
5 Excellent level of knowledge and in-depth understanding of the topics Excellent skills in analysis, synthesis and independent judgment

II° - Oral exam)
Discussion of a simplified report of company valuation
Up to 10 points
0-2 Lack or limited ability to analyze the report
3-5 Good knowledge and understanding of the data presented in the report but lack of sufficiently coherent logical argument
6-8 Good ability to analyze the report presented but the arguments expressed in a way
rigorous but with a language that is not always appropriate / technical
9-10 Good autonomy of judgment on the report presented and arguments presented rigorously and with appropriate / technical language