Master Meetings

The Swiss Banking System: History, Institutions and Perspectives
Prof. Coggi, Dr. Raimondo

The Swiss financial system: whence it came, where/what? it is, and where it heads?
How did the Swiss financial system emerge, what institutions (e.g. intermediaries, marketplaces, regulatory bodies, legal frameworks, monetary architecture) constitute it and what are the relations between them, the real economy and the international financial markets? What role do Swiss banks play in the international allocation of capital and what are the challenges that lie ahead for them? This course attempts to answer these questions from an historical, macroeconomic and managerial perspective, starting from the 18th century to these days. The last part of the course will address contemporary issues such as cost efficiency, digitalization and sustainability.

Argumentation in Finance
Prof. Rocci, Prof. Palmieri

The course introduces to the argumentative dimension of financial communication and interactions. As a discourse aimed at justifying a claim on reasonable grounds, argumentation intervenes in finance to achieve two main interconnected goals, which are considered in this course:

(1) Support sound decision-making. Both corporate managers and investors make use of argumentation to improve the quality of their decisions by removing or at least reducing uncertainty, by assessing the credibility of a disclosed or signaled piece of information and the reliability of a prediction or forecast, by detecting possible biases or signs of hubris in corporate reporting, and more in general by connecting in a relevant way available information to evaluations and investment decisions.

(2) Persuade investors and other market actors. The legitimation, diffusion and success of financially-relevant corporate initiatives significantly depend on management’s ability to offer convincing reasons that persuade investors, regulators, analysts and media in relation to the firm’s valuation and to various issues emerging in corporate life.

Students will learn theory-informed methods for analyzing arguments and critically assessing their soundness practicing them on arguments produced by a variety of actors in the financial arena: entrepreneurs and corporate leaders, activist investors, shortsellers, securities analysts and journalists, examining recurrent forms of reasoning (argument schemes), recurrent strategies (argumentative patterns), fallacies and biases of reasoning.