Accounting and Finance for Managers

15 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This module is designed as an introduction for non-financial managers to comparative international accounting and financial reporting and analysis within the context of converging standards. No prior knowledge of accounting procedures is assumed or required. As part of the module, you will produce a business financial analysis report.

Bank Financial Management

15 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This module provides a comprehensive account of the primary aspects of bank financial management. Bank financial management covers the fundamental bank instrumental techniques, such as bank asset investment and bank funding instruments, and measuring costs and yield curves. The module demonstrates how bank managers evaluate bank performance, specifically using operational performance measures and frontier analysis, then details the elements of bank asset and bank liability management. Novel aspects of bank strategies are covered, including bank funding alternatives, pricing off balance sheet items, and contingent claims products. International banking and foreign exchange are also discussed. In addition, the module deals with bank mergers and acquisitions.

Banking and Financial Institutions

15 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

The module aims to provide you with a combination of theoretical background and practical insight into some of the main strategic issues faced by the modern banking institutions. The module provides a good grasp of both the basics (the structure and environment of banking) and selected aspects of the applied economics of the modern banking firm. The topics covered include structure-conduct-performance, competition, bank efficiency, regulation, international banking and bank failures and crises.

Corporate and International Finance

15 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This module covers the most important topics in corporate finance such as: capital investment decision-taking; financing andcapital structure; risk management; and portfolio theory. You will then analyse issues in international finance including: models of exchange rates; efficiency in foreign exchange markets; monetary unions; and international financial crises.

Financial Crises and Bank Regulation

15 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the financial sector regulation and supervision and central bank liquidity management. The ongoing financial crisis implies that the focus should be on the implications and lessons for the future of the financial markets. The module presents the inadequacies in macroeconomic, in particular fiscal, policies and the need to redesign the international financial architecture regarding the regulatory framework.

Financial derivatives

15 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module provides up-to-date coverage of the main aspects of financial derivatives. Moreover, it gives an overview of the mechanics of futures markets, the hedging strategies using futures, the determination of forward and futures prices, the mechanics of options markets and the swaps, and the Greek letters. The module presents the cornerstone of financial derivatives, namely the Black-Scholes-Merton model and goes further to introduce 'Value at Risk'.

Financial and Time Series Econometrics

15 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This course introduces you to a variety of applied time-series econometric techniques, giving you the skills  to enable you to independently use these techniques with confident. An important emphasis of the course is to provide you with hands-on experience of econometric analysis through using a variety of economic data sets.

Multinational Financial Management

15 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

The main aim of this module is to evaluate the financial decision-making of companies operating internationally, providing an understanding of global capital markets, in the context of international trade patterns, international monetary systems, exchange rate regimes and foreign exchange markets, as well as tax rules and legal and institutional complexities. You will also develop competences in the appraisal of international capital expenditure choices and in the effective implementation of multinational management control systems. In addition, the module considers the political risks faced by multinational enterprises, including firm-specific risk, country risk, and global risk, together with an assessment of the origins and repercussions of the current credit crisis, including the international scale of securitization, and the impact of market failure in international interbank markets on multinational financial management.

Summary outline: currency regimes and markets and the management of foreign exchange risk; measuring and managing exchange exposure; international financing and capital market integration; the cost of capital for foreign investments; capital budgeting for the multinational corporation; working capital management; taxation and transfer pricing; country risk analysis and the implications of the financial crisis of 2007-09 and module resumé.

Quantitative Methods for Finance

15 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This course provides an introduction to statistical techniques needed in the study of finance. It covers parametric and non-parametric hypothesis testing with financial applications, ANOVA, diagnostic testing, regression analysis in a financial context and experimental design It provides the key tools needed for the FATSE course which follows in the spring term.

Research Methods

15 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

The main aims of this module are to introduce a range of research methods for the collection and analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data, to advance your analytic research skills through practical experience, and to develop your skills in reading and evaluating journal articles and research papers.

The main topics to be covered are: literature reviews, searches and referencing; social science research; case study research - comparative and longitudinal methods; survey research; basic concepts in statistical analysis; goodness-of-fit tests & contingency tables - correlation analysis; simple comparative tests; ANOVA: one-way and RCB designs; two-variable regression and multiple regression.

Research Project (MSc Banking and Finance)

30 credits
Summer teaching, year 1

The main aim of this module is to enable you to undertake an applied research project. Specifically, it involves researching and writing up, in the form of a dissertation, a specific aspect of banking in a way that would support effective decision-making within an international/national banking context.

Research skills will be taught as part of this module to enable students, through reflective practice, to apply those skills to a specific research topic in banking.
For example, you will be able to estimate bank efficiency scores using either non-parametric (DEA) or parametric (SFA) methodology so as in a second stage to examine empirically the impact of underlying contributing factors, such as Basel III regulation framework, on efficiency. Towards this goal, you will benefit from the new state of the art academic building and the new on-line data bases such as Bloomberg and Bankscope.

The aim is to enable you to critically survey and identify relevant theories and models and then to employ them in banking and finance. The skills and context aspects of the module prepare you for this task as well as fulfilling programme objectives related to generic transferable skills. Some students, such as those sponsored by organisations, may wish to examine a particular problem/area for their organisation.

Planning Phase (Teaching Block 2/Spring)
Research problems, issues and controversies in the field of banking and finance;
Planning and designing research; literature review; methododologies in banking;
analysis of data; empirical estimations; implications and conclusions.

Research Phase (Teaching Block 2 - Teaching Block 3/Spring - Summer)
Individual, self-directed research of the approved topic, leading to the submission of a written Research Portfolio and Research Project.

Risk Management

15 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module addresses the various aspects involved in the management of risks in project and operational business environment. Such aspects include: factors from the external and internal (relative to the project, firm and industry) environment that contribute to the emergence and escalation of risks; the processes required to manage those risks and the tools and methods applied to identify, assess and control risks. The management of stakeholders plays a central role in the characterisation of risk events and in their associated impacts once such events occur.