MSF Curriculum

2 Credit Hours

This course addresses the accounting process used to measure and report economic events to outside stakeholders. The course focuses on fundamental concepts, required financial statements, and key relationships. The course emphasizes the role of accounting in contracts and in decision-making by investors, creditors, and regulators.

4 Credit Hours

This course provides an in-depth and quantitative examination of the principles of financial decision-making. Students will learn about the financial ecosystem and concepts of value maximization, mathematics of finance, and the valuation of financial securities. They will also learn how to estimate a firm’s opportunity cost of capital and use that cost of capital to evaluate capital investment projects and to value firms.

2 Credit Hours

This course provides students with a working knowledge of the open source programming language Python. The course will teach the essential aspects of coding in Python and then apply the tool to financial applications involving analytics, large datasets, and unstructured data. The objective of the course is to provide students with a better understanding of how computers can be used to solve business problems.

1 Credit Hour

This course will integrate ethics into business decision making. Students will use case studies, readings, and assignments to evaluate business situations and make ethical decisions.

1 Credit Hour

The course is designed to provide MSFR students with the tools to manage their career throughout their lifetime. It not only addresses the planning process necessary to start the job search, but also incorporates specific assistance in such areas as resume writing, interview preparation and skills, networking and other tactics.

1 Credit Hour

This course will provide an opportunity for students to learn from and interact with professionals in the field. A series of lectures on selected days throughout the semester will feature a wide range of experts on areas of finance including investments, equity valuation, private equity, fixed income, real estate, and more.

2 Credit Hours

This course covers the fundamentals of investment theory, including an introduction to asset classes, portfolio theory, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, market efficiency, and portfolio performance evaluation. In addition, it provides an introduction to how secondary markets work to facilitate trading securities.

2 Credit Hours

An in-depth exploration of financial statements from the perspective of a financial decision maker rather than a producer of financial statements. Students will gain the knowledge and skills required by a financial analyst charged with assessing a variety of corporate situations including business combinations, joint ventures, credit analysis, inventory analysis, and managing long term liabilities. Key ratios utilized in credit analysis will be covered as well as peer company analyses.

2 Credit Hours

This course provides an overview of traditional quantitative techniques used in empirical analysis. The focus of the course will be on linear and non-linear regression and related analytical tools for use both in characterizing data as well as for forecasting. The course will also cover how these tools and techniques apply to special types of data, such as time series and qualitative data, which present unique challenges. Particular focus will be placed throughout on the practical issues confronting quants when undertaking quantitative analysis.

1 Credit Hour

This workshop develops financial modeling skills through the hands-on construction of an interactive financial model “from scratch.” Through practical examples and annotated
Excel guides, the lectures will direct participants to blend accounting, corporate finance, and Excel skills to create a dynamic, three-statement financial model. The completed product has five years of projections, three years of historical data, and supporting schedules, including working capital, debt, equity, depreciation, and amortization. Other advanced topics include understanding and controlling circularity errors, troubleshooting, sensitivity/scenario analysis, and discounted cash flow valuations. After learning the model, students will have the chance to apply it to stocks in the Fighting Irish Capital portfolio.

2 Credit Hours

This course provides a sound conceptual framework for the valuation of derivative securities. Students will understand fundamental concepts regarding derivatives. Topics include option pricing models (binomial, Black-Scholes-Merton), options trading strategies, the pricing of futures/forward contracts, futures trading strategies, and swap contract valuation.

2 Credit Hours

This course covers the fundamentals of real estate valuation and investment feasibility analysis. Coverage includes basics of property types, appraisal methods of valuation for residential properties, the components of commercial real estate income and expense, basic real estate valuation models and real estate capitalization rates, basics of real estate pro forma, and feasibility analysis for both existing assets and development projects, basics of real estate financing, the structure of real estate private equity, and an introduction to real estate in multi-asset class portfolios.

2 Credit Hours

This course builds on the tools developed in the prior course, with a particular focus on modern quantitative tools. Machine learning – both supervised and unsupervised – will be covered in detail, with an emphasis on applications commonly used in finance. The course will be taught primarily from an intuitive, conceptual perspective, with an emphasis on how the tools work, the problems they are typically applied to in practice, and their strengths and limitations.

1 Credit Hour

This course will provide an opportunity for students to learn from and interact with professionals in the field. A series of lectures on selected days throughout the semester will feature a wide range of experts on areas of finance, including investments, equity valuation, private equity, fixed income, real estate, and more.

2 Credit Hours

This course emphasizes the set of decisions and problems that financial and operating managers face in determining short-term financial policy, setting terms when structuring contracts and deals, and managing business processes of the company. Major topics include identifying working capital elements and their relationships to company operations, financial analysis, cash forecasting, banking relations, cash-flow systems, and short-term investment and borrowing strategies.

2 Credit Hours

The objectives of this course are to describe important fixed income securities and markets, and develop tools for valuing basic fixed income securities and managing interest rate risk. The course covers securities such as coupon bonds, forwards, floating rate notes, swaps and corporate bonds, and includes topics such as yields versus rates of return, the repo market, duration and convexity, hedging by immunization or matching, credit risk, valuation by no arbitrage (i.e., replication).

2 Credit Hours

This course provides a detailed understanding of the tools used by market professionals and corporate managers to analyze the value of companies and stocks using discounted cash flow and relative valuation techniques. Students will identify and interpret the key value drivers for a firm or industry, estimate cost of capital and cash flows, develop quantitative models for firm and equity valuation based on DCF and multiples, and present firm and equity valuation analyses in a professional manner.

1 Credit Hour

This workshop will provide a foundation for students to develop and effectively communicate visual insights and actionable data for a non-technical audience using Tableau and other visualization and presentation tools. Students will practice data storytelling to turn raw data into a compelling message that resonates with the intended audience.

2 Credit Hours

This course provides a detailed understanding of the merger and acquisition process, both from the sell-side (using auctions or negotiated sale processes) and the private equity buy-side. The deal timeline will take the class from private equity firm formation to post-closing exit and include key aspects such as valuation, deal structure, due diligence, M&A accounting, financial analysis and modeling, and transaction documentation. The class will also learn about the role of a strategic buyer in contrast to a PE firm.

2 Credit Hours

While the previous corporate finance course focused on the details of financial decision-making at the operational level, this course focuses on higher-level decision regarding the firm’s financial policies and strategies. In it, we will explore the optimal financing of the firm’s operations, whether and how to return cash to investors, whether and how to manage corporate risk exposures, and how the firm should be organized and governed. We will explore underlying financial theory and practical applications through a series of case studies in capital structure policy, payout policy, corporate risk management, and corporate governance.

2 Credit Hours

This course introduces students to advanced topics in investments. The building blocks of the course include portfolio theory and factor models, active quantitative investment strategies based on time-series and cross-sectional return predictability, market frictions (transaction costs, liquidity, short-sale constraints, tax, etc.) and major institutional players. Special topics change from one year to another to reflect recent trends and practices in the industry.