Master in Entrepreneurship and Innovation

On completion of the course, successful students will be able to, prepare financial statements, make budgets and financial forecasts, understand why a business needs external financing in the early stages of its life, how it can obtain financing, and how firms interact with their financiers.

In this course, we study the financial aspects of new and existing businesses. It is an introductory course on Accounting and Corporate Finance adapted to the Master in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
We will learn how to use key concepts of financial reporting, revenues, expenses, profits, assets, liabilities, owner's equity, and practice with making financial statements in excel. 
We will also study the time value of money, and learn how to gauge whether a project is worthwhile undertaking from a financial point of view. We will see that most companies require significant outside financing before they can return cash flows to their financiers. Before discussing the key sources of financing for corporations. We will then give an overview of Venture Capital and Private Equity, bank financing and eventually the stock and bond markets. We will also address the capital structure, corporate governance, and dividend policy. Finally, we will study how we can estimate the value of firms, and shares of partial ownership (‘stocks' or ‘equities'). Topics covered include:

• Basics of accounting.
• Preparing simple Financial Statements in excel.
• Financial Planning.
• Sources of Finance.  
• The time value of money; discounting cash flows.
• Capital Budgeting: NPV vs IRR vs Payback; making net present value (NPV) investments
• Risk and the Cost of Capital
• Equity Financing: Voting Rights and Residual Cash flow Rights (dividends); preferred stock.
• Debt financing: Bank debt, bonds, convertible debt.
• The optimal Capital Structure. Trade-off between debt- and equity financing.
•       The effect of taxes, incentives, and information.
• Valuing your business and negotiating with financiers.

The course consists of lectures, case studies class discussion, and in-class and homework assignments.

50% Written exam

Litterature :

There is no required reading apart from the lecture slides and notes. I may also distribute some articles.