The Executive Finance Program

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

• Gain an overview of entrepreneurial finance, private equity, venture capital, and leveraged buyouts
• 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

The 2021 in-person program includes:

• Fireside Chat: Guest Speakers: Learn firsthand from renowned guest speakers who share how they have managed strategic challenges in their organizations. Past speakers have included senior leaders such as Ray Young, ’86, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Archer Daniels Midland Company.
• Social Dining Activities: Participants will join professor Doug Skinner for a closing dinner at a local restaurant to enjoy good food and great conversation.