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During your Master of Science in Global Finance studies, you will learn international finance from the world's foremost authorities on global business and cross-cultural interaction. You'll be prepared to lead anywhere and succeed everywhere.

Courses in the Master of Science in Global Finance program leverage actual business cases from Canada, France, Denmark, Indonesia, the UK, China, Argentina and Puerto Rico, helping you develop the global financial skills necessary to succeed in today's cross-cultural world economy.

Core Courses

Accounting from a Global Perspective I
Finance from a Global Perspective I
States & Markets in the Global Political Economy
Quantitative Methods
Decision Science
Accounting from a Global Perspective II
Managing Global Business
Global Marketing Strategy

Finance from a Global Perspective II
Finance from a Global Perspective III
Global Economics
Communications & Negotiations Across Cultures
Regional Business Environment
Accounting from a Global Perspective III
Global Ethics

Global Securities & Investments
Global Portfolio Management
Advanced Topics in Finance: Global Private Equity
Global Risk Management

Core Course Descriptions

Accounting from a Global Perspective I

This course introduces accrual accounting concepts including revenue recognition, matching, and asset and liability valuation. Topics covered include the recognition and measurement of accounting events, the preparation and analysis of financial statements (balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows), the use of international financial statements and an introduction to inter-corporate investments.

Finance from a Global Perspective I

This course will focus on the building blocks and the basic theories of Finance. Topics addressed include: Present value (and Net Present Value) concepts; the basics of stock and bond valuation (including the NPVGO model); capital budgeting (various tools of capital budgeting, and derivation of cash flows for capital budgeting); working capital management.

States & Markets in the Global Political Economy

This course covers fundamentals of the global political economy including (1) major conceptual frameworks for understanding the linkages between international politics and international economics; (2) key issue areas such as international monetary and financial relations, international trade, foreign investment and transnational enterprises, and North-South relations; and (3) analysis of key international economic institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and World Bank.

Quantitative Methods

This course introduces basic statistical concepts and their application in the business world. The course starts with the use of descriptive statistics to summarize data. Next, the basic concepts of probability are examined. The course then moves on to consider sampling and statistical inference. The final topic is an introduction to the use of simple linear regression analysis to model relationships between variables. The course material is approached from an applied perspective, with extensive use of business examples to illustrate the concepts. Excel will be used to summarize and graph data and the SPSS statistical package will be used for data analysis.

Decision Science

This course builds on material from the Quantitative Methods class. It introduces the use of computer simulation for scenario planning, covers regression analysis in depth, and covers the use of computerized techniques for optimization and linear programming. The course takes an applied business perspective, with examples drawn from operations management, finance, and marketing. The @Risk computer package is used extensively in this class. Other software packages used in the course include LINDO and SPSS.

Accounting from a Global Perspective II

This course covers the application of accounting models to the measurement of assets, liabilities and stockholders’ equity. Topics covered include marketable securities, receivable and inventory valuation, fixed and intangible assets, bonds, leases, dividends, stock buybacks, stock splits and foreign currency translation. The emphasis of the course is on the evaluation of corporate financial reporting policy and the usefulness of financial reports for decision making. U.S. and international accounting standards are covered.

Managing Global Business

This course reviews key concepts and tools in global strategy and organizational behavior for students already possessing some knowledge in these areas.

Global Marketing Strategy

This course focuses on developing competitive advantage by creating customer value. An understanding of customer relationships and their strategic implications is developed within the context of competitor and value-chain relationships.

Finance from a Global Perspective II

The second module of finance picks up where the fundamentals course leaves off. Topics addressed include: Portfolio theory and the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM); Weighted Average Cost of Capital; capital structure theories (including agency/signaling theories and dividend policy); financial market efficiency and its implications.

Finance from a Global Perspective III

The third module of finance examines corporate finance issues from managerial and strategic perspectives, and extends the concepts covered in the previous two modules to cross-border settings. Topics addressed include: financial and real options; risk management; corporate valuation (domestic and cross-border).

Global Economics

This course investigates, from the business manager’s perspective, the determination of exchange rates, the nature of foreign exchange markets and hedging instruments; international financial markets and the transmission of funds between countries; alternative international monetary arrangements and institutions; balance of payments analysis; the respective economic consequence in response to monetary, fiscal and exchange rate policy changes. The course also analyzes conditions for successful growth and the causes and risks of economic crisis.

Communication & Negotiations Across Cultures

This dynamic and interactive course provides managers with an effective framework for achieving their goals in global management settings. The course will assist students to prepare for and execute time-tested strategies for achieving communication competence with persons from different cultures. This course will also cover negotiating in the global context. It will not only examine theories of culture and communications, but will also place students in an experiential situation to gain valuable skills for overcoming obstacles in global management environments. Through use of cases, multicultural team exercises, student negotiation exercises, and simulations, this course will equip the global manager with tools to solve problems and take advantage of opportunities in a multicultural world.

Regional Business Environment

The Regional Business Environment courses deal with the political and social context in which business activities take place. This includes consideration of eight factors that shape or reflect the operational realities of management and business, including: Patterns of historical development cover political, social and economic events and structures. Geographic environment involves human and economic geography, covering population and natural resource distributions, regional financial and trade centers, and transportation systems. Political environment includes government structure, state role, interest groups, political parties and the policy-making process. Cultural traditions cover religious traditions and socio-cultural dimensions that have a direct impact on business operations. International environment includes regional organizations, regional political and economic trends, regional peace and conflicts, and the place of the region in the global system. For economic environment, economic policies, current economy patterns, and major industries are discussed. Under legal environment, major regional trade barriers, investment policies, and intellectual property protection issues are covered. There are also discussions on major current issues.

Accounting from a Global Perspective III

This course covers the development and use of managerial accounting information, including both financial and non-financial performance measures, in making long- and short-run decisions. Topics include cost-profit-volume analysis, cost behavior, relevant costs, job-order and processes costing, activity-based cost management and the analysis of customer profitability.

Global Ethics

This course provides an exploration into how corporate and social organizations can act entrepreneurially and act in a socially responsible manner.

Global Finance Electives

Corporate Financial Reporting

This course provides an in-depth analysis of corporate financial reporting as a vehicle for communicating information to the firm's stakeholders. Topics covered include revenue and expense recognition, quality of earnings issues, the analysis of cash flows, foreign currency translation, the valuation of debt instruments, derivatives and executive stock compensation.

Financial Statement Analysis

This course focuses on analyzing financial statement information in a variety of global decision contexts including security valuation, credit decisions, strategy and competitive analysis, mergers & acquisitions, and litigation support. Financial analysis uses cash flows and ratio measures of a company's operating, financing and investing performance for comparison to past historical performance or with competitors. Accounting analysis uses an understanding of how a company's business and its operating strategy are represented by accounting rules and develops procedures for adjusting accounting measures of performance. Prospective analysis develops forecasts of financial statements to make estimates of a company's equity valuation.

Investment Banking

This course imparts a basic understanding of the investment banking business as an intermediary in the capital and merger markets and demonstrates how it serves both its issuing clients and investing customers by focusing on several services it provides, how client relationships are established and maintained, and several analytical techniques for solving problems. It is not intended to be vocational and is presented from the perspectives of senior managers and senior investment bankers.

Multinational Corporate Finance (FORAD)

This course applies the theories of managerial and international finance to the problems of multinational treasury management. Topics include issues and techniques in multinational funds transfers; identifying and measuring foreign exchange and interest rate risk; multinational tax planning; managing foreign exchange and interest rate risk; hedging instruments, including forward contracts, options, and swaps; and financially engineered synthetics. Students also manage the financial functions of a computer-simulated multinational corporation, construct a biennial report summarizing their management results, and present oral reports to a board of directors consisting of professors and invited business professionals.

Financial Engineering & Derivatives

This course provides the foundation for derivative products used throughout finance. The first part introduces the basics of value and risk used throughout the course.Topics covered include futures, forwards, swaps, options, introductory bond pricing concepts, such as yield-curve, duration, immunization and hedge ratios. The concepts are applied to problems in asset, liability and portfolio management. Students also manage the risk management function of a computer-simulated multinational corporation. This course is highly mathematical.

Global Securities & Investments

This course surveys the investment management landscape, and delivers the theory and technology attendant to intellectual and/or career pursuit in this area. Topics explored include the domestic and international aspects of portfolio optimization; emerging markets and global asset allocation; security analysis and selection; stock sorting and screening algorithms; mutual fund performance decomposition and benchmarking; fixed income analytics and metrics; earnings quality; the franchise factor; distress prediction models; behavioral finance models; and financial derivatives from a portfolio management perspective. A respectable floor of numeracy is advisable; a CFA® emphasis prevails.

Global Portfolio Management

This course is concerned with the theory and practice of optimally combining securities into portfolios (portfolio analysis) and with asset allocation decision making. Considerable emphasis is placed on computer-based simulation and optimization. Students are required to simulate the optimization of a multi-asset portfolio. This course is highly mathematical and requires excellent computer skills.

Advanced Topics in Finance: Global Private Equity

This course provides an overview of the private equity industry globally, its role in economy, its participants, its operations, and its recent development. It covers different phases of the private equity investment process and the players involved at each stage. The phases include: setting up a fund, selection and screening of investments, exploring valuation techniques, structuring a deal, managing and exiting investments. Emphasis will be on the practical aspects of private equity transactions through case studies and interactions with private equity professionals. This course is not offered every trimester.

Global Risk Management

This course explores the risk exposures of international organizations. Generally dealing with accidental loss situations, the course uses case studies developed by the instructor (World Trade Center, Volcanic Eruption Disasters, Dupont Hotel, and others) to enhance the learning process. Topics include: emergency and disaster planning; environmental risk auditing; political risk management; cyber risk exposures; loss control and financing; risks associated with mergers and acquisitions; ocean transportation risks; expatriate risks; and others. Emphasis is on the practical application of Risk Management tools to everyday operations of international organizations.