MBA Update: Corporate Financial Decision Making

School and work have kept me too busy to post for a while! I have finished one year of the MBA program so will try to catch up on class overviews while I’m technically on break before January’s classes begin.

A few lessons

• Evaluating Financial Performance
• Discounted Cash Flow Valuation
• Interest Rates & Bond Valuation
• Stock & Stock Valuation
• Capital Budgeting: Forecasting the Relevant Cash Flows
• Capital Budgeting: the Investment Decision
• Risk & Return
• Weighted Average Cost of Capital

The course goals:

1. This course will help you understand concepts, processes, and frameworks related to financial decision making in publicly held corporations.
2. Develop an understanding of the underpinnings of corporate finance theories and principles.
3. Identify how corporate financial decisions are made.
4. Apply the methods of obtaining capital to support financial decisions.

Materials:

• Corporate Finance: Core Principles and Applications, 5^th edition  Ross, Westerfield, Jaffe and Jordan.
• How we use ratios to assess the financial health of corporations
• The role of time value of money in corporate decision-making
• Credit cards, excess debt, and the time value of Money  “Journal of Financial Education”. (Spring 2015)
• The role of high yield bonds in the bond market
• Stock market valuations
• Consider the difficulties in choosing investments that are visible and those that are not
• Murphy, M. “CFO Journal: Investment Gaps Show up in Public,”Wall Street Journal, Eastern Edition, 12 January 2016, p. B7.
• Consider the difficulties in choosing investments via the capital budgeting process in a foreign country
• Pathirawasam, C. “Capital Budgeting Practices: Evidence from Sri Lankan Listed Companies” International Journal of Management and Applied Science, ISSN: 2394-7926 Volume-2, Issue 5, May 2016, pp. 23 – 26.
• Consider the whether you agree with Neil Woodford’s view of volatility and risk
• Consider the extent to which the Federal Reserve influences the WACC

I started the online MBA program at Montclair State University in January 2017.