Strategic Financia Management
An 8-week Masters level module focusing on strategic financial management techniques.
Module Aims
This module aims to provide an understanding of the issues and techniques of strategic financial management from both an internal and external stakeholder viewpoint.
Learning Outcomes
In order to complete the module successfully, students are expected to be able to critically assess, apply and evaluate the issues and techniques of strategic financial management.
Written Assessment
- Essay 01: A written assignment (3,000 words or equivalent) which requires students to apply appropriate financial management techniques to a given scenario and to critically discuss related issues
- Report 02: A report (3,000 words or equivalent) which requires students to apply financial statement analysis of a company and to critically discuss related issues
Content Summary
- Objectives of financial management: Overview of key financial and non-financial objectives; Agency theory; Corporate governance; Capital markets and efficiency; Risk and return.
- Financial statement analysis (FSA): The role, purpose and content of financial statements; The use of accounting and economic ratios; Analysis and interpretation using electronic database resources (e.g. FAME, KeyNote); Strengths and limitations of FSA.
- Capital investment appraisal: Cash flow and profit forecasting, relevant costs, incremental costs, cost behaviour; Non-discounted and discounted appraisal methods; The effects of inflation, taxation and risk; Scarce resource issues.
- Value, risk and the required return: Analysing investment risk; Portfolio theory; The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM); The required rate of return on individual investments.
- Strategic Financial Decisions: Sources of finance; Factors affecting interest rates including the yield curve; The cost of debt, cost of equity, and the weighted average cost of capital (WACC); Gearing and capital structure.
This module will facilitate the development of Personal Development Planning through the delivery of the key skills identified.
Key Skills
- Problem solving and decision making including identifying, formulating and solving business problems. The ability to create, evaluate and assess a range of options together with the capacity to apply ideas and knowledge to a range of situation
- Communication, oral/writing, using a range of media which are widely used in business.
- Numeracy and quantitative skills including data analysis, interpretation and extrapolation. The use of models of business problems and phenomena
- Applying communication and information technology for business applications
- Self-Management in terms of time, planning and behaviour, motivation, self-starting, individual initiative and enterprise
- Learning to learn and developing an appetite for learning; reflective, adaptive and collaborative learning
- Self-aware, openness and sensitivity to diversity in terms of people, cultures, business and management issues
- Group working and interpersonal skills including leadership, team building, influencing and project management skills together with skills of effective listening, negotiating, persuasion and presentation
- Application of research skills to business and management issues, either individually or as part of a team for project / dissertations / presentations. This requires familiarity with a range of business data, research sources and appropriate methodologies.
Course curriculum
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1Module Specification
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2Week 01: Objectives of financial management
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3Week 02: Financial statement analysis (FSA)
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4Week 03: Strategic Financial Decisions
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5Week 04: Assessment 1 Due
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6Week 05: Value, risk and the required return
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7Week 06: Value, risk and the required return continued
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8Week 07: Capital investment appraisal
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9Week 08: Assessment 2 Due