Finance (FINC)

Prerequisite: ECON 201B and ECON 202B, ACCT 102 or equivalent, MIST 201 or equivalent, and STAT 180; and College of Business major or Financial and Quantitative Analysis minor or permission of the Associate Dean for Faculty. Coverage includes the role of financial management, tools of financial analysis, cost of capital, financial structure, long term assets and financial forecasting.

Prerequisite: Junior or Senior Status. This course is an introduction to the language and principles of personal financial management, including personal financial planning, budgeting, spending, and investing to build practical skills for lifelong use.

Prerequisite: FINC 301. This course develops the processes of making optimal strategic decision by applying corporate financial theory to cases of financial policy, financial instruments and valuation. The course will focus on six broad topics including cost of capital and capital budgeting, discounted cash flow valuation and financial multiples, payout policy, equity and debt financing, corporate control and recapitalizations, and corporate governance.

Prerequisite: FINC 301 and Permission of Instructor. The first of two courses on Student Managed Investment Funds providing hands-on money management experience in investing. Major areas covered are: (1) portfolio objectives and risk measurement, (2) company analysis and valuation, and (3) portfolio formation and risk control. Additional attention is paid to critical and fundamental concepts and techniques in support of performing investment analysis and making investment decisions.

Prerequisite: FINC 301 and Permission of Instructor. The second of two courses on Student Managed Investment Funds providing hands-on money management experience in investing. Major areas covered are: (1) industry/sector analysis, (2) trading, and (3) performance evaluation. Additional attention is paid to reinforcing and adding depth to previous learning of related concepts and techniques.

Prerequisite: FINC 301. This course introduces students to technology supporting financial modeling and decision making. Students will learn to apply and extend the concepts they have learned in the introductory finance course into a spreadsheet model framework of Microsoft Excel. The course will examine modeling in four primary areas: (1) corporate finance models, (2) fixed income securities models, (3) portfolio models, and (4) option pricing models.

Special topics of interest to faculty and students are discusses in individual seminars which focus on Finance.

Directed by a finance faculty member, students conduct individual research focusing on an approved topic of interest in finance.