The Advanced Finance Program
Overview:
Introduction:
This seminar brings together two most of the most important areas of financial management: Understanding Finance to Influence Strategic Decisions, and Financial Analysis, Planning, and Control.
Course Objectives:
At the end of this course the participants will be able to:
- Think and manage strategically and plan more effectively for the future
- Identify the role of financial management in strategic decision-making
- Use the financial techniques of planning and control
- Improve performance from the use of the tools of financial analysis
- Develop business strategies
- Understand how financial management support strategic development
- Broaden their financial knowledge
- Develop and manage the financial aspects of their role more effectively, and enhance their performance.
- Increase their self-confidence in dealing with financial issues and financial professionals.
- Appreciate how such decisions may affect their departments or business units, as well as their companies.
- Acquire the ability, when involved in decisions about investment, operations, or financing, to choose the most appropriate tools from the wide variety of financial techniques available to provide quantitative analysis.
- Understand the exact nature and scope of the business problems to be analyzed
- Obtain a quick ‘ballpark’ estimates of likely outcomes of decisions
- Understand the implications and relative importance of cash flow as distinct from accounting profit in economic and financial analysis
Targeted Audience:
- Financial Analysts
- Financial Controllers
- Accountants
- Treasurers
- Corporate Planning
- Business Development Professionals
- Middle and Junior Management as a useful element in their career advancement
Course Outlines:
Unit 1: Fundamentals of Strategic Planning:
- What is strategy?
- Strategic management
- Strategic analysis
- Mission
- Objectives
- Strategic decision-making
- The strategic planning process
- Environmental analysis
- Resources analysis
- Strategic choice and strategic decision-making
- Strategic implementation
- Corporate objectives and accountability
- Forecasting financial data
Unit 2: Fundamentals of Financial Statements:
- Financial statements
- Balance sheet
- Income statement
- Alternative asset valuation methods
- Cash flow statement
- Common size (or horizontal) trend analysis of financial statements
- Vertical trend analysis of financial statements
- Segmental analysis of financial statements
- Value-added analysis of financial statements
- Understanding the cash flow cycle and the operating cycle
- Break-even and multiple product break-even analysis
Unit 3: Capital Structure and Leverage:
- Sources of funds
- Capital cost models
- Cost of equity
- Cost of debt
- The weighted average cost of capital (WACC)
- Can we determine a company’s optimal capital structure?
- Capital structure models
- Preparing projections to determine financing needs
Unit 4: Capital Budgeting:
- Future values, present values, and DCF
- Capital budgeting principles
- Methods of evaluating capital investment projects
- Accounting rate of return (ARR) and payback
- Net present value (NPV) versus internal rate of return (IRR)
- How do you choose which method to use?
- Equivalent annual cost (EAC) method
- Capital budgeting methods
- Capital asset pricing model (CAPM) versus arbitrage pricing theory (APT)
- Does it make a difference whether we lease or buy?
Unit 5: Managing Financial Risks:
- The value of perfect information (VOPI)
- Types of risk
- Risk management principles
- Talking to your bankers about managing risk
- How to develop the tools for your company?
- How to minimize risk?
- Insurance and hedging
- Interest rate and foreign currency exchange rate risk
Unit 6: The Challenge of Financial Economic Decision-Making:
- The practice of financial-economic analysis
- Corporate value and shareholder value
- A dynamic perspective of business Benchmarking your own strategic position/competitor analysis
- The agency problem and corporate governance
- What information and data to use?
- The nature of financial statements
- The context of financial analysis and decision-making
Unit 7: Assessment of Business Performance:
- Ratio analysis and business performance
- Management’s point of view
- Owners’ point of view
- Lenders’ point of view
- Ratios as a system – pyramids of ratios
- Integration of financial performance analysis – the Dupont system
- Economic value added (EVA)
- Predicting financial distress
Unit 8: Projection of Financial Requirements:
- Interrelationship of financial projections
- Operating budgets
- Standard costing and variance analysis
- Cash forecasts and cash budgets
- Sensitivity analysis
- Dynamics and growth of the business system
- Operating leverage
- Financial growth plans
- Financial modeling
Unit 9: Analysis of Investment Decisions:
- Applying time-adjusted measures
- Net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR)
- Strategic perspective
- EVA and NPV
- Refinements of investment analysis
- Equivalent annual cost (EAC)
- Modified internal rate of return (MIRR)
- Sensitivity analysis, scenario analysis, simulation, and NPV break-even
- Dealing with risk and changing circumstances
Unit 10: Valuation and Business Performance:
- Managing for shareholder value
- Shareholder value creation in perspective
- Evolution of value-based methodologies
- Creating value in restructuring and combinations
- Financial strategy in acquisitions
- Business valuation
- Business restructuring and reorganizations
- Management buyouts (MBOs) and management buy-ins (MBIs)