Master Meetings

MSc in Banking and Finance

Quantitative Methods for Finance

Prof. Antonietta Mira

This course will introduce the methods for inferential statistics with applications focusing on finance.
The free-ware statistical software "R" (free version of the commercial software "Splus", one of the main software used for statistical purposes) will be used to perform hypothesis tests and construct confidence intervals building on the knowledge of the software acquired in the Introduction to Statistics course which is a prerequisite of the course.

Corporate Finance

Prof. Laurent Frésard

This course teaches the logic underlying the firm’s financial decisions: investment, financing, and payout policies.

The main themes of the course are:

What is corporate finance?

The concept of value

The discounted cash-flow (DCF) method in theory and practice

Capital budgeting decisions

Market efficiency and financial policy

Financial structure and the Modigliani-Miller theorem

Payout policies: dividends and share repurchases.

Capital Markets

Prof. Francesco Franzoni

The course is an introduction to the institutions and economic functioning of capital markets. First, the course provides a general description of the basic features of these markets: the asset classes, the trading mechanisms, and the main actors. Then, it deals with individual portfolio choice.
Next, individual portfolios are aggregated to derive the main concepts of equilibrium in equity markets (CAPM, APT). These concepts are used to introduce the notion of market efficiency. The empirical evidence on market efficiency is discussed and analyzed from the point of view of classical and alternative theories of capital markets, such as Behavioral Finance.
As a new chapter, the course deals with fixed income securities (prices, yields, the term structure, and bond portfolios management). The course then examines the tools that financial analysts use to make investment decisions (macroeconomic and equity analysis). Finally, all the notions developed during the course are used to study applied portfolio management. In this context, the tools to analyze the performance of different types of investment funds are introduced.