FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

The course covers four main parts.
The first one concerns how to assess the risk and return trade-off in financial markets under the usual hypotheses of classic finance: rationality of investors and efficiency of financial markets.
The second one covers the issue of the financial structure of companies, starting from the traditional Modigliani and Miller framework until the more recent empirical findings.
The third one deals with the empirical issue of corporate evaluation. It will describe the methodologies used to carry out a corporate evaluation.
The fourth will move to specific issues in financial management. Each student will receive a journal article to review and comment.

Students will understand the foundations and recent devolopments of financial management.
They will also learn to present and discuss critically a research paper.

The time value of money, compounding and discounting, the basics of financial accounting, the structure of the balance sheet and income statement, and notions like EBIT, EBITDA, operating cash flows and so on.

Foundations of finance
Mean variance framework
CAPM (CWS Ch. 6, no sections L and following) and market efficiency
Value of the firm and the cost of capital
Corporate financial structure e corporate evaluation
Specific issues in financial management

Copeland T.E., Weston J.F., Shastri K., 2004, Financial Theory and Corporate Policy, The Addison-Wesley Series in Finance, 4th Edition: chapters 3, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13, 15.

A) In class empirical assignment
Each student will have to critically review an article provided by the professor
• 30’ for class presentation (during the last classes of the course)
• PPT presentation (further instructions in class)

B) Short essay on the topic of the article presented (<= 6 pages, 1.5 spaced) (to be prepared after the end of classes)
• Introduction and brief summary (1 page)
• Literature review (already in the article, but also beyond it) (2 pages)
• Unsolved issues, open problems, extensions, food for thought ….. (<= 3 pages)

C) Written Exam
Part I
To test a general knowledge of course programme
• 6 questions on course content
Part II
To test a general knowledge of articles specifically discussed and presented in class
• 1 question on each article presented and discussed in class

Upfront lectures and teaching material (slides and simulations of exam exercises) available on the e-learning platform moodle.unive.it

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development