Core
Economics for Managers
The course aims at enabling participants to understand the economic environment, both on the micro and on the macro level, with a view on incorporating this knowledge into strategic managerial decision-making. Building on basic economic principles such as opportunity costs and rational decision-making principles, the course will apply managerial economics concepts to real world problems such as demand analysis, pricing and output decisions, and strategic analyses of various competitive settings. The impact of the macroeconomic environment on managerial decision making is explored by studying business cycle dynamics, inflationary and deflationary processes, financial market influences and long-term growth prospects.
Accounting for Managers
The aim of this course is to introduce accounting to participants. Accounting comprises financial accounting and management accounting. Both forms of accounting rely on information extracted from the financial information system. As financial statements are the key source of information for both financial and management accountants, we will first deal with the methods that financial accounting uses to produce an annual report. Then, we will have a closer look at management accounting. Management accounting requires information extracted from the financial information system. A financial information system deals with the processing of the flow of data on business activities into financial statements. The nature of information in financial statements depends on the information needs of the users. Therefore, attention is being paid to acquire skills needed to provide information to users.
Corporate Finance
This is a course designed to expose the participants to the various techniques available to assist management and to arrive at optimal financial decisions within a firm, including those of investment and working capital, financing and capital structure as well as dividend distribution.
Marketing
This course focuses on competitive strategies firms can use to attain strategic, sustainable advantage and achieve superior profitability over the long-term in spite of competitor actions, customer shifts, and industry and business environment changes. Customer-driven differentiation is the essence of such strategies. This course will focus on competitive advantage strategies, the profit implications of market strategies, factors affecting customer satisfaction, and creating and sustaining high value-added experiences.
Management Studies
This course covers major concepts, essential tools and theories from three areas – management, organizational behavior and human resource management. It investigating major managerial skills, roles and functions. It also examines workplace behavior using three levels of organizational analysis – micro (individual), meso (group) and macro (organization). Finally, specific emphasis will be put on practices and sets of functions of human resource management including resourcing, reward management, human resource development, performance management and others.
Business Strategy
Business Strategy course integrates all functional disciplines together in an attempt to look at and comprehend the wholesome business picture. While running a business in competitive environment, it is expected that managers have conceptual and abstract skills to understand the business issues and challenges companies face with today. Managers are expected to have an understanding how the company as a whole is evolving over time and be able to run the company based on their wholesome integrated view of the company; they should have good vision to shape up the company's destiny not just by exploiting the emerging opportunities in the surrounding environment, but also creating its own opportunities. Therefore, the course also examines company’s external and internal-organizational environment to aware of the business dynamics and transformations and take appropriate & timely actions to adapt with the changing environment and direct the company responsively and proactively
Digital Transformation
Creating new businesses, capturing new markets, enhancing organizational effectiveness occur through innovation, transforming processes - or both. New technologies, processes, competition and globalization compel entrepreneurs and existing firms to distance from the familiar and foster innovation and agility. This course examines successful strategies, business models, frameworks, funding, barriers and risks for introducing break-through products and services. Topics include business model innovation, strategic leadership, human centered and design-driven innovation, knowledge and change management. The course also aims to strengthen the capabilities of participants to use disruptive digital technologies to design innovative and viable business models, processes, services, products and strategies. The course attempts to equip students with knowledge and methods to conceive, lead and execute digital innovation initiatives. Course examines the interdisciplinary character of digital change, with complex relationships among the different sub-categories. It discusses the pace of change and the imperative it creates for businesses and provides the context for this transformation and what it takes to win in the digital age. Instruments such as BCG's proprietary framework, which helps to identify key areas to digitize, including strategy, core processes, and technology as a ‘how-to’ for digitizing organizations.
Leadership
One of the most important roles of a leader, regardless of where he or she sits in the organization, is making decisions that guide an organization or unit toward success. Leaders make a variety of strategic and tactical decisions for their group, including those about the strategy of the unit, who is on the team, how the unit will function, and how resources are deployed in pursuit of a goal. Leading a unit is a complex endeavor and involves vision, the ability to make decisions under pressure and uncertainty, and the ability to motivate others toward one's vision. This course studies leadership and analyzes its symbiotic relationship between with decision making and other managerial functions combining classical wisdom, recent research, and theory and practice to teach leadership and decision-making skills. Throughout the course we focus on leadership and decision making in the business world. To achieve a better understanding of leadership and decision making mix of reading, discussion, case studies and team exercises will be used.
Project Management
Organizations today introduce changes on a regular basis. Implementing organizational change can be seen as a project in its own right, with time, cost and quality trade-offs. The course provides students with the project management tools and techniques that, first, identify the processes involved, then sets out how these objectives can be achieved. It aims to develop skills required to lead a team of professionals charged with producing results on time and on budget. By completing the course, students should be able to establish the team's objectives, oversee procurement, review contractual obligations, plan personnel assignments, and eliminate productivity barriers.
Quantitative Methods for Business
This course provides the fundamental methods of statistical analysis, the art and science if extracting information from data. The course will begin with a focus on the basic elements of exploratory data analysis, probability theory and statistical inference. With this as a foundation, it will proceed to explore the use of the key statistical methodology known as regression analysis for solving business problems, such as the prediction of future sales and the response of the market to price changes. The use of regression diagnostics and various graphical displays supplement the basic numerical summaries and provides insight into the validity of the models. Specific important topics covered include least squares estimation, residuals and outliers, tests and confidence intervals, correlation and autocorrelation, collinearity, and randomization. The presentation relies upon computer software for most of the needed calculations, and the resulting style focuses on construction of models, interpretation of results, and critical evaluation of assumptions.
Research Methods
In this course, a participant is trained in the key features and main stages of writing their final thesis. Participants will learn how to develop their ideas, how to identify issues, and formulate problems statements, understand the importance of different research techniques, as well as develop their academic writing style. The course will support them with the main objectives of the Master Thesis, which are to select and articulate a business problem, develop a framework within which to analyze the problem and provide meaningful recommendations for management.
Finance Specialization
Internal Control, Audit and Compliance
This course develops an understanding and appreciation of the philosophy of the auditing process and provides students with the skills necessary for effective decision making in regard to auditing, financial reporting, and ethics. The course covers the standards, concepts, and principles of auditing theory and practice. Topics include generally accepted auditing standards; systems of internal control; tests of compliance; transaction sampling; quality and reliability of information for decision making; the concepts of audit risk, materiality, and evidence; frameworks for the rules of conduct and the code of professional conduct; and information technology applied to internal control. Course also gives understanding of the regulatory environment, regulation and compliance. The course examines variety of issues related to corporate compliance programs and efforts, a critical area for corporations and other entities in today’s world and an area of opportunity and challenge for lawyers. Anchoring in corporate governance principles and best practices and risk management law and practice, the course will explore both theory and practice, together with specific issues in the implementation and execution of corporate compliance programs.
Islamic Banking and Finance
Islamic banking is one of the fastest growing sectors in financial market. Many countries around the world have seen a great demand for Islamic banking services, which has created great job potentials in the field. The main objective of the course is to present to the students conventional material in money and banking plus many relevant Islamic elements about which a good deal of literature has been accumulated during the past two decades. The course aims to teach the student main aspects of similarity and differences between the contemporary monetary and banking system and that which is based on the Islamic Shari'ah. Various Islamic alternatives within a bank as well as throughout the whole banking system should be explained and the possible problems and obstacles facing their application have to be delineated. Specifically, the course explores structure of the Islamic banking and finance, industry, its theoretical foundations, products, performances, Islamic financial instruments and risk assessment issues.
Financial Markets and Institutions
Financial markets, or markets for financial assets, play an important role in the efficient functioning of a market economy. Financial Institutions are any establishments that make these markets function efficiently. The course studies the fundamental principles that govern financial markets and institutions. We attempt to understand the workings of the Banking Industry, the Central Bank and the behavior of financial intermediaries. Topics include valuation of financial assets and the characteristics of financial instruments in money and capital markets. We analyze the relationships among financial institutions, monetary policy and the stability of the economy as a whole. This course explores the function, pricing, and institutional structures of financial markets. Our intent is to understand the differences between these instruments and the institutions that operate in today's financial markets.
Advanced Corporate Finance
This course advances students’ knowledge of corporate finance. Students will be exposed to fundamental theories in financial management and financial markets, applications of these theories in business practice, and limitations and difficulties in applying financial theories to solve real problems. There are three essential decisions for the firm the investment decision, the financing decision, and the payout decision. The investment decision involves the evaluation and selection of projects that will add value to the firm. The financing decision involves the selection of the appropriate mix of contracts to finance the projects chosen through the investment decision. The payout decision deals with various options the firm has to distribute the free cash flow to its owners - the shareholders. Mastering the theoretical foundation of these decisions and learning to apply these concepts when dealing with ambiguity is the basis of the class.
Corporate Governance and Investor Relations
This course will teach the fundamental theories and practice of corporate governance. This course covers the history of the corporation, boards of directors, the division of profit sharing and various forms of employee ownership and equity ownership among insiders, regulation, shareholder activism, the impact of takeovers and mergers and acquisitions on governance, ethical issues such as conflicts of interest and insider trading, international corporate governance, and policy developments likely to impact the corporation.
Financial Risk Management
The first section of this course will explore the fundamental principle underlying the derivatives. The second section of the course will explore forward and futures contracts including pricing and applications such as hedging with futures. The third section of this course will study derivative securities with option-like payoffs with an emphasis on no arbitrage pricing restrictions, the binomial option pricing model, the Black-Scholes model, hedging, and applications of option pricing. The final section of the course will give a brief introduction to numerical techniques for valuing derivative securities with an emphasis on risk management.
Investment and Portfolio Management
The course examines the theoretical basis and practical approach to managing investment portfolios of financial assets. The course objective is to acquaint students with the theoretical foundation of modern portfolio theory, the major groups of investors and their investment objectives and constraints, and to learn how to employ practical skills in investment management, forming capital market expectations and forecasting markets activity to justify major investment portfolio management strategy for equity and fixed-income instruments.
Business Valuation and Corporate Restructuring
The practical and theoretical implications of bankruptcy and distressed restructuring will be examined in this course. Topics include valuation effects of bankruptcy; workout strategies; the bankruptcy-reorganization process from the viewpoint of different participants; and the implications of bankruptcy for banks, workers, and state and national industrial policy. Part of the course will be dedicated to understanding firm valuation methods from both a conceptual and practical framework while combining both accounting and finance into a practical framework for valuing firms.
Private Equity
This course is the study of private equity money invested in companies that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange or invested in as part of buyouts of publicly traded companies. The objective of the course is to provide a comprehensive overview and in-depth understanding of the private equity markets. Private equity finance will be explored from a number of perspectives, beginning with the structure and objectives of private equity funds; followed by the analysis and financing of investment opportunities; and finally crafting strategies for harvesting investments.
Digital Finance and FinTech
Emerging digital technologies are redefining finance by expanding customers’ access and the reach of providers, lowering the cost of providing financial services and enabling new business models based on expanded services to customers and potential new revenue streams to providers. Digital finance is fundamentally about saving, depositing and transferring money, accessing credit and insurance, and performing transactions via digital channels—online banking, mobile phones, cards, computers, tablets, and so on. “FinTech” refers to financial sector innovations involving technology-enabled business models that can facilitate disintermediation, revolutionize how existing firms create and deliver products and services, address privacy, regulatory and law-enforcement challenges, provide new gateways for entrepreneurship, and seed opportunities for inclusive growth. Firstly, we’ll explore the emergence of new business models in various areas of banking, insurance and wealth management. Secondly, we’ll focus on how the technological advance in data and analytics are enabling the financial sector innovations. A special attention will be devoted to blockchain, the ‘internet of finance’ and its potential of further transforming the sector. Lastly, we would deal with the increasing security and privacy concerns, operational risks as well as social challenges that emerged as part of the FinTech transformation.
