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Executive MBA Finance | Curriculum | WU Executive Academy
The Business Core modules cover vital economic and business administration expertise alongside up-to-date management and leadership tools and techniques. The modules in the Finance specialization provide participants with theoretical expertise, analytical know-how and practical tools to succeed in the dynamic, globalized field of finance. The curriculum has been specifically designed around the implementation of applicable content and is taught by an international faculty of top experts from the finance sector.
Below, please find an overview of all modules taught during the Executive MBA. Click on the module names for detailed content information.
The course introduces core theories of Corporate Finance and key financial questions in non-financial firms. This includes investment, risk, financing- and dividend decisions. Students learn to optimize corporate capital structure, working capital management, and treasury in an applied, practical manner from the perspective of a CFO. The course also discusses important boundary conditions of financial decisions (corporate governance, corporate social responisibility).
Students acquire in-depth knowledge of financial risk management and international finance. In the role of corporate risk officers and treasury experts, students gain exposure to payoff profiles and portfolio strategies with derivatives. Explore the valuation of options, futures, forwards, and swaps based on various underlyings. Take a look at the institutional facts of international financial markets. Students study the management of foreign exchange risk, carry trade strategies, the value of international diversification, and the evaluation of international investment projects.
This module complements the traditional view of finance outlined before with a behavioral finance perspective. First, we focus on psychological effects and biases that influence human decision-making and behavioral finance-related explanations of existing capital market phenomena. This part also shows you how to minimize the impact of psychological errors on your own decision-making. We will discuss how modern technology may help to overcome some of these biases but amplify others. The second part applies this knowledge to corporate financial decisions, investigating value destruction by investors or irrational managers.
This course focuses on special-purpose investment banking transactions such as mergers & acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, private equity, project finance, restructuring). Students gain an overview of business valuation. Learn to implement various techniques of business valuation (e.g. multiples, DCF methods, real options). They learn about the process and challenges in special-purpose transactions. Courses may focus on particular types of transactions.
Students learn about constructing and managing portfolios of securities. Most importantly, students gain insights into the valuation and management of fixed income instruments, portfolio management, and asset allocation. Understand the term structure of interest rates, the bootstrapping technique, the management of interest rate risk, credit risk, and the risk-return trade-off (e.g. Sharpe Ratio and Treynor Ratio).
This module is devoted to additional, current topics in finance. To ensure that the contents are up-to-date, topics will be changed regularly. Recently, covered topics have included energy finance, machine learning in finance, Fintech, ESG and Project Finance.
At the end of the Executive MBA program, students have to write a master's thesis in order to receive the academic degree of Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA). The intention of the master's thesis is to guarantee that the graduate of the Executive MBA program is able to write scientific papers on his or her own.