• Identify, explain, discuss and apply the core concepts, models and methods
• Calculate, interpret and compare financial statistics, prices, returns and costs
• Elaborate, present and discuss solutions for financial decision problems

This course provides a broad overview of corporate finance covering the main tools that financial managers use to analyze investment and financing decisions. The first set of lectures will be devoted to introducing students to the goals pursued by corporations and to the financial side of their operations. Subsequently, we will be reviewing some of the accounting concepts that represent an essential background in this field, and we will introduce the concept of “time value of money”, which will be a key building block in developing our theory of asset pricing. The same paradigm will also be applied to the valuation of the streams of cash flows that firms generate through their investment projects, which will ultimately lead us to the formulation of a method for making investment decisions. Later in the course we will pay more attention to the role of risk in such matters, and we will also focus on how companies can raise the cash they need for their investment projects, with a discussion of the issues that alternative financing tools pose.

Brealey, Myers and Marcus, Fundamentals of Corporate Finance, newest edition available in adequate advance of the course start. McGraw Hill. International Edition).