The Executive Finance Program
Booth School of Business
What are the topics?
Booth School of Business
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Who should attend
The program is for executives in finance-related roles, or those who have strategic financial oversight of their unit or organization, and have at least a basic understanding of accounting and finance. This program is also an excellent fit for those who expect to have more financial responsibility in the future.
Titles include: C-suite, president, general manager, managing director, VP, director, financial advisor, controller, treasurer, and general counsel.
About the course
Deepen your skills and gain an understanding of current trends in capital markets and corporate finance to increase value and improve performance in your organization.
As a leader in your organization, the decisions you make can have a significant impact on the financial health of your company. This program will help you assess the value of your strategic decisions by giving you a broader understanding of finance and the interaction between business strategy and financial strategy.
By attending this program, held in a blended online and in-person format, you will:
- Obtain a deeper understanding of how your organization’s economic outcomes are reflected in its financial statements, and how those statements are used inside and outside the organization.
- Gain a sophisticated understanding of how to use financial statements to better understand the economics of other entities, including competitors.
- Communicate more effectively with financial executives within the organization and with important external stakeholders such as analysts and investors.
- Better understand how to use modern valuation techniques to evaluate investment opportunities, both projects and other businesses, including M&A and LBOs.
- Learn why optimizing management of capital, including liquidity and leverage, can affect firm value and how to value other businesses.
- Understand entrepreneurial finance, including private equity and venture capital.
- Learn how to manage external communications and capital to avoid unwanted attention from activist investors, short-sellers, and other corporate predators.
Program Outline
Pre-Work to Lay the Foundation (Online)
To help ensure you are ready to tackle the program’s financial concepts, we offer access to optional, online course material via a proprietary platform. Led by professor Haresh Sapra, this self-paced tool helps participants build their financial acumen and refresh important concepts prior to the program. Each module features faculty video lectures, exercises, cases, and self tests, allowing participants to tailor their learning and focus their time on modules and topics most important to them.
Financial Statement Analysis and Cash Flow Forecasting
- Learn terminology, review of financial statements, cash flows, DuPont formula
- Use DuPont analysis to understand drivers of profitability
- Evaluate quality of earnings analysis
- Understand free cash flow versus earnings
Investment Decisions and Valuation
- Evaluate projects using net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR)
- Calculate cost of capital: weighted average cost of capital (WACC)
- Study valuation methods: discounted cash flow (DCF), multiples, adjusted present value (APV)
- Apply valuation to M&A deals
Financing Decisions
- Understand financing sources
- Understand the basics of capital structure decisions and how these decisions affect value
- Learn the differences among financial instruments to implement desired capital structure
- Examine distressed debt
Entrepreneurial Finance and Strategy
- Gain overview of entrepreneurial finance, PE, VC, and LBOs
- New venture strategy
Creating Shareholder Value
- Explore practical perspectives: corporate governance and the role of boards; CFO viewpoint
Formulating Strategy
- Understanding the vital difference between goals, strategy, and management: which are easy and which are difficult?
- The role of top management in setting strategy: what is the real challenge great strategists see?
- Analyzing competitors: how to better think about and predict competitors' actions and why this is critical for success
- Collecting data to build your strategy: how to decide which data are useful among the many sources
Experts
Steven Kaplan
Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Douglas Skinner
Douglas Skinner is a leading expert in corporate disclosure practices, corporate financial reporting, and corporate finance, with a focus on payout policy. His research addresses (1) the causes and capital market effects of managers'' corporate disclosure choices (especially forward-looking infor...
Gregory Bunch
Greg Bunch draws on a wealth of experience as an entrepreneur, manager, consultant, alderman, and teacher. He is the founder of Masterplan International Corporation, a strategy consulting firm. He was also a partner at Brandtrust, a brand strategy consultancy. Greg is a co-founder of Oration, a ...
Scott Meadow
Since 1982, Scott Meadow has been a principal investor in the private equity industry. He is the 2011 recipient of the Richard J. Daley Award. The Daley Medal acknowledges a single individual who has given direct and extraordinary support to the state of Illinois by participating in or being an a...
Amir Sufi
Amir Sufi is the Chicago Board of Trade Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He serves as an associate editor for the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics...
Videos and materials
Finance For Executives
The Executive Finance Program at Booth School of Business
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Because of COVID-19, many providers are cancelling or postponing in-person programs or providing online participation options.
We are happy to help you find a suitable online alternative.