Corporate Finance I: Measuring and Promoting Value Creation

In this course you will learn how to use key finance principles to understand and measure business success and to identify and promote true value creation. You will learn how to use accounting information to form key financial ratios to measure a company’s financial health and to manage a company's short-term and long-term liquidity needs. You will also learn how to use valuation techniques to make sound business investment and acquisition decisions. Finally, you will learn how to incorporate risk and uncertainty into investment decisions and how to evaluate the performance of existing investments.

Upon successful completion of this course you will be able to:
• Understand how companies make investment decisions that create value for shareholders
• Use accounting statements to measure the financial health of a company
• Forecast and manage a company’s short- and long-term liquidity needs
• Measure the contribution of a new project or acquisition to shareholder value
• Incorporate risk into investment decisions using the appropriate discount rates
• Evaluate the performance of a company or divisions of a company

This course was previously entitled Financial Evaluation and Strategy: Corporate Finance. The course received an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 based on 177 reviews over the period of September 2015 through August 2016. A detailed breakdown of ratings and reviews received for the prior version of the course, which is identical in content to the current course, is provided in the course orientation page.

This course is part of the iMBA offered by the University of Illinois, a flexible, fully-accredited online MBA at an incredibly competitive price. For more information, please see the Resource page in this course and onlinemba.illinois.edu.

Course Overview
-In this module, you will become familiar with the course, your instructor, your classmates, and our learning environment. The orientation also helps you obtain the technical skills required for the course.

Module 1: The Objective of the Corporation and Analysis of Financial Ratios
-In Module 1, we will discuss the objectives of the corporation. We will introduce the concept of shareholder value and discuss the pros and cons of maximizing stock prices. We will then learn how to calculate financial ratios that measure concepts such as liquidity, leverage, and profitability. We will work with accounting statements and financial data from real world companies and learn how to use this data to measure the financial health of companies and make comparisons with competitors.

Module 2: Financial Planning
-In Module 2, we will learn models that allow us to forecast and manage a company's short-term investments such as capital expenditures. We will forecast the future financial statements of a real world company and learn how to figure out how much external financing the company will need. We will then use real world examples to learn how short-term investments in working capital determine a company's need for short-term financing.

Module 3: Making Investment Decisions
-In Module 3, we will learn tools that allow us to measure the contribution of a new investment to shareholder value. We will learn how to calculate the net present value (NPV) of an investment and how to use the NPV to make a decision on whether to make the investment or not. We will also learn to calculate the rate of return (IRR) on an investment project and how to properly use the IRR in investment decisions. Finally, we will learn how to incorporate real options into investment analysis to be able to make decisions about investments such as R&D (research and development).

Module 4: Mergers and Acquisitions, Risk, and Performance Evaluation
-In Module 4, we will apply our investment valuation tools to understand when a merger between two companies creates shareholder value. We will learn to distinguish between good and bad reasons for companies to engage in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and we will learn how to price an M&A deal. We will also learn the specific characteristics of leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and how they can create value for shareholders. We will then learn how to incorporate risk into investment valuation by changing discount rates. We will calculate the weighted-average cost of capital (WACC) for a real world company and learn how to use WACC to value investments and to measure the performance of the company or a division of the company.

Course Conclusion