FINANCIAL POLICIES AND M&A STRATEGIES-2

The goal of the course is to apply fundamental principles of corporate finance to real companies and demonstrate how investors evaluate and value firms, given the adopted financial policies. The perspective is the firm value maximization: the focus is on principles that guide corporate manager decisions on financing and investing. In detail, business decisions are classified into three groups: investment, financing, and dividend decisions. This course also takes into account the affect of ESG on firm valuation.
At the end of the course, students will be able to fully understand and apply the process of valuation that represents the standard activity of a security analyst in a broker house.

Attending and actively participating to classes, studying the textbook and the other suggested materials, including the real cases used during the course, will allow students to:
1. Knowledge and comprehension
• acquire advanced knowledge of fundamental models of corporate finance and know how to apply them in practice, to comprehend how in reality the investment, financing and dividend decisions work.

2. Ability to apply knowledge and comprehension
• master the techniques to determine the cost of capital of firm in oder to discount the expected cash flows according to risk they embed
• identify the company optimal financial structure
• comprehend the consequences of the choices of dividend policies
• apply methods and tools acquired during the course to interpret the dynamics of corporate finance

3. Judgment ability
• evaluate the sustainability of the firm financial structure and its equilibrium
• evaluate the effects of different investment policies that the firm may choose

The main prerequisite is a robust knowledge of financial and management accounting and basic corporate finance.

• Debt e firm value: the effects of corporate and personal taxation
• Debt e firm value: the effects of agency and distress costs
• Debt e firm value: the term structure of debt
• ESG and firm Valuation
• Market Efficiency
• Portfolio performance evaluation
• Options in Corporate Finance: Extensions and application

Aswath Damodaran, Applied Corporate Finance: A User's Manual – 4th Edition,
ISBN-13: 978-1-118-80893-1
Roncalli, T., 2022. Handbook of sustainable finance. Available at SSRN 4277875.

Supplementary study material - such as slides, case studies, and exercises - will be prepared and made available on Moodle.

The final grade will be usually through written examination. To all course attendants the opportunity to carry on specific weekly assignments will be given in order to increase the final grade. Written examination is made of MCQS and two/three questions to answer in written English, within 60 minutes. Some question might require answering by numerical examples Course attendants will be required to contribute actively to classes and to participate in class quizzes. Their marking will be based on their participation as well. Each attendant is invited to contribute to a workgroup and highlight her/his own contribution. Final marking for each student will be based both on their knowledge at theoretical level and practical level, along with their capability to communicate in a very efficient way their knowledge

All the classes are based on a very practical approach thus widely using cases and real corporate experience but without offending sound scientific framework. Classes will be thus developed in a typical business-school approach. During each weekly cycle lessons will be intended to
- the former, to give a complete theoretical framework
- the second, to highlight the inner difficulties in practical application and practice
- the latter, to discuss a real case
Classes requires a strong relationship with the attendants that could be encouraged by the joint attendance of classes by guest attendants from real corporation, professional and financial intermediaries. Attendants are thus suggested to read in advance the readings for the specific lessons according to the analytical syllabus that will be available a few days before classes begin.

English

written