Finance for Non-Finance Executives

Demystify finance. Make sense of financial concepts and apply your new-found knowledge with confidence.

Build your understanding and confidence in finance

Gain practical finance skills. Become financially fluent, mastering key aspects of accounting and corporate finance in just one week.

Benefits for you

• Become proficient in financial language and terminology – communicate knowledgably and with confidence at all levels.
• Gain a strong grasp of best practice corporate financial management, grounded within the context of your everyday decisions.
• Develop the skills to prepare budgets and forecasts for operations and develop models that answer short-run 'what-if' questions.
• Discover how to analyse and benchmark your company’s financial performance.
• Use discounted cash-flow principles and net present value (NPV) techniques to perform successful project appraisals.
• Make informed, valuable contributions to board-level discussions with new expertise and a deeper understanding of financial reports.
• Develop the critical finance skills to accurately identify future problems – and successfully exploit new opportunities.

Benefits for your organisation

Gain an executive who can:

• Make effective decisions, backed up with a clear understanding of the implications for your company’s financial performance and value.
• Use activity analysis to manage product and customer costs.
• Understand the relationship between risk and return.
• Make better operational decisions based on the factors affecting performance and shareholder value.

Gain a wealth of financial understanding

Demystify your financial accounts, unlock your company’s full potential and apply your new-found financial knowledge in a senior management context.

What you learn

Improve your analytical perspective and change the way you look at financial data. Focus on three key themes of financial management:

• Interpret company accounts – decipher them and discover what balance sheets and income statements reveal about your company’s performance.
• Use accounting for management decisions – make confident decisions about your organisation’s future, exploring financial performance, customer profitability, product and service costs, and project appraisals.
• Analyse shareholder value – give your strategic decision-making a boost, exploring company valuation, risk and return, and performance measures.

How you learn

• Experience fresh insights, new perspectives and a host of practical exercises that broaden your financial accumen.
• Illuminate your understanding of finance. Immerse yourself in an environment where everything applies directly to your business.
• Analyse the annual reports of two major supermarkets. Understand their financial performance, recognise new opportunities and forecast different profitability scenarios.
• Explore real-world scenarios through international case studies.

Your learning experience

• Learn how to analyse a company's performance through balance sheets, income statements and cash flow statements.
• Look at forecasting and budgeting performance, as well as ways to measure product and customer profitability.
• Learn to use net present value and discounted cash flow techniques to conduct project appraisal or valuation. You also explore how to use sensitivity analysis to assess risk and then apply an appropriate discount rate to take the risk into account.
• Explore techniques for analysing shareholder value, including company valuation, risk and return relationships and how to estimate a company's required rate of return. You also look at assessing and managing the key drivers of performance and shareholder value.
• Examine current issues in performance measurement, as well as applying the shareholder value concept internally to drive business decisions.

London or Online

London (in-person)

• Experience our world-class Executive Education programmes at our central London campus.
• Immerse yourself in experiential activities, collaborative group exercises and face-to-face networking opportunities with your peers, guest speakers and our world-class faculty.
• For programme iterations running in-person and online simultaneously, you’ll experience a format that bridges the gap between on-campus and virtual learning, enabling you to collaborate with your fellow participants both in London and around the world.
• Learn in the heart of London and access campus amenities.

Online

• Bring the LBS experience to you with live virtual learning led by our world-class faculty.
• Join a dynamic virtual classroom, where you’ll be immersed in experiential activities and collaborative group work with your peers, while learning from and interacting with our leading faculty and guest speakers.
• For programmes running in-person and online simultaneously, you’ll experience a format that bridges the gap between on-campus and virtual learning, enabling you to collaborate with your fellow participants both in London and around the world.
• After completion, online participants will have the chance to join us on campus for an exclusive day of networking with classmates and insightful sessions with LBS faculty.