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GEST-S410

Advanced corporate finance

academic year
2024-2025
2025-2026

Course teacher(s)

Kim OOSTERLINCK (Coordinator)

ECTS credits

5

Language(s) of instruction

english

Course content

Introduction

Financial Planning, From Accounting to FCF

Capital Structure

Project Valuation using the WACC

Financial Options (a refresher)

Real Options

Market Efficiency

Raising Capital and Going Public

Long-Term Bonds

Objectives (and/or specific learning outcomes)

After this course, the students will be able to:

· Understand the concept of cash flows and free cash flows

· Understand the concept of discount rates (wacc) and its relation to risk

· Make wise financial decisions (such as investment or financial structure decisions) at corporate level

· Understand the different financing methods and their impacts on the firm

· Compute the value of a firm, taking into account the optimal capital structure

· Build a critical opinion based on their financial observations and computations

Prerequisites and Corequisites

Required and Corequired knowledge and skills

Preriquisite courses:
  • GEST-S302 (Finance de Marché) or similar knowledge based on a similar course in another university (including basic concepts such as Present value, Bond and Stock valuation, Capital budgeting, Portfolio theory and CAPM).
  • STAT-S202 (Probabilités, inférence statistique et recherche opérationnelle) or a similar course in another university (including basic concepts such as volatility, variance, covariance, correlation...)

Accounting, Microeconomics, Statistics, Econometrics and basic concepts in Finance.

Courses requiring this course

Teaching methods and learning activities

Lectures and exercise sessions

References, bibliography, and recommended reading

Main course references

  • Hillier,D. Ross, S., Westerfield, R. Jaffe, J. and Jordan, B. Corporate Finance, European edition, 11th edition, 2016.
  • Brealey, R., Myers, S. and Allen, F. Principle of Corporate Finance, 12th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2017 (en français, Principe de Gestion Financière).

Other pedagogical references:

  • Berk, J. and De Marzo, P. Corporate Finance, 4th edition, Pearson, 2014 (version française Finance d’entreprise).
  • Bodie Z., Kane A., and Marcus, A. Investments and Portfolio Management, Global Edition, McGraw Hill, 2011.
Other reading:
  • Graham, J. and Harvey R., 2002, “How Do CFOs Make Capital Budgeting and Capital Structure Decisions?”, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 15:1.

Course notes

  • Université virtuelle

Contribution to the teaching profile

The course contributes to the development of the following skills (in Management Sciences) :

  • LO 1.2 Master and apply key economic and management concepts, frameworks and theories in a professional context to identify a business opportunity and build a relevant innovative solution to it
  • LO 1.3 Approach a managerial or business problem within different disciplinary frameworks (law, communication, psychology, etc.) and taking external factors into consideration
  • LO 2.1 Adopt a scientific approach to data collection, research and analysis and communicate results with clear, structured and sophisticated arguments
  • LO 2.2 Display critical thinking and develop autonomous learning strategies and techniques

The course contributes to the development of the following skills (in Business Economics) :

  • LO 1.2 Master and apply key economic and management concepts, frameworks and theories in a professional context to identify a business opportunity and build a relevant innovative solution to it
  • LO 1.3 Articulate key macro and sector-specific facts and economic trends and their drivers in terms of business practice
  • LO 1.4 Thorough and critical understanding of the workings, benefits and limits of markets, as well as regulatory approaches.
  • LO 2.1 Adopt a scientific approach to data collection, research and analysis and communicate results with clear, structured and sophisticated arguments.
  • LO 2.2 Display critical thinking and develop autonomous learning strategies and techniques

Other information

Additional information

For more information, please refer to the course outline (université virtuelle).

Contacts

benjamin.lorent@ulb.be (for the academic year 2024-2025)

Campus

Solbosch

Evaluation

Method(s) of evaluation

  • written examination

written examination

  • Open question with short answer
  • Open question with developed answer

Mark calculation method (including weighting of intermediary marks)

Written exam represents 100% of the final grade

Language(s) of evaluation

  • english

Programmes