Financial Accounting
- RF 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
- F 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
- RF 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
- F 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
- 3 points
Financial Planning & Analysis
This course explores the use of financial information for internal planning, analysis, and decision-making. The main objective of the course is to equip you with the knowledge to understand, evaluate, and act upon the many financial and non-financial reports used in managing modern firms.
Managing any modern firm requires information about the firm’s products, processes, assets, and customers. This information is a key input into a wide range of decisions: analyzing profitability of various products, managing product-line portfolios, setting prices, measuring and managing profitability of customers, making operational and strategic decisions, evaluating investments, guiding improvement efforts, and so on.
The focus of this course is on modern internal-reporting systems. We will discover that many firms do not provide their managers with useful information; we will see numerous examples of value destruction and bankruptcies caused by this. We will also investigate some modern ideas in how an organization’s internal information system should be designed to enhance value creation; and we will see how world-class firms take advantage of their competitors’ internal-reporting mistakes.
To attain the right level of understanding, we will briefly explore the mechanics of the many techniques used to prepare internal reports. But the emphasis in this course is very much on interpretation, evaluation, and decision-making.
We will examine the following key topics:
Designing managerial information systems to support an organization’s strategy.
Determining which financial and non-financial metrics are necessary for success in various competitive environments.
Evaluating profitability of products, services, assets, and customers.
The capabilities and the limitations of various reporting systems in guiding value-maximization, cost-control, and improvement efforts.
The limitations of traditional cost-estimation systems.
Activity-based costing and activity-based management.
Estimating and managing the costs of capacity resources.
Relevant costs and relevant revenues in business decisions.
The information necessary to evaluate long-term business decisions.
The incentives created by various performance-evaluation techniques.
- MW 9 a.m.-10:30 a.m.
- MW 10:50 a.m.-12:20 p.m.
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Instructor:
Tim Baldenius
Info - 1.5 points
Earnings Quality & Fundamental
Financial reporting provides a window into the operational and financial workings of a company. However, translating this information into actionable insights is anything but straightforward. It requires an understanding of: Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), the quality of financial information, and the adjustments and analyses used to assess profitability, risk, growth, and value.
The course starts with a short review of financial reporting and then focuses on various modules of fundamental analysis, including earnings quality analysis, performance evaluation, risk assessment, forecasting, and valuation. The remaining class meetings (approximately 14 out of 24) are devoted to a deeper dive into the reporting and analysis of key transactions (e.g., business combinations, leasing) and financial statement line items (e.g., revenue, income taxes).
To allow for dynamic progress, the class schedule is flexible:
Topic Approximate # of class meetings
1. Review of financial reporting 2
2. Financial statement analysis 4
3. Forecasting and valuation 4
4. Revenue and related items 2
5. Operating capacity 3
6. Estimated items 3.5
7. Financial instruments 2
8. Investments in businesses 2.5
9. Equity and related items 1
Total 24
While the course covers the theoretical underpinning of the various analyses, it focuses on implementation and practical uses. We will study many actual financial disclosures and cases of accounting abuses, and we will conduct fundamental-based valuation and other financial analyses, including using Excel tools that will be provided to the students. Studying financial disclosures will help you better understand the underlying assumptions and accounting choices the firm made in arriving at its accounting numbers. This information can be used to make earnings quality adjustments to the accounting numbers to make them more consistent across time or more comparable across companies. Studying cases of accounting abuses will help you improve your ability to “read between the lines” and develop a set of red flags to look for in analyzing financial statements. The class also incorporates insights from practitioner and academic research.
The primary objective of the course is to acquire a deep understanding of accounting information and how to intelligently use it in making investment, credit, and similar resource allocation decisions. Such knowledge is required of investors, consultants, analysts, banke
- MW 10:50 a.m.-12:20 p.m.
- MW 2:20 p.m.-3:50 p.m.
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Instructor:
Doron Nissim
h-index: 24 Info - 3 points
Financial Statement Analysis a
This course will provide students with hands-on experience analyzing financial statements. Students will learn about the general tools, theoretical concepts, and practical valuation issues of financial analysis. By the end of the course, students should be comfortable using firms' financial statements (along with other information) to assess firm performance and make reasonable valuation estimates.
Course content and organization In the first half of the course, we will develop a valuation framework that integrates a firm’s strategy, its financial performance, and the credibility of its accounting. The framework consists of the following steps:
1. Understand the firm’s strategy. We will assess the firm’s value proposition and identify its key value drivers and risks.
2. Accounting Analysis. We will assess earnings quality and evaluate whether the firm's accounting policies capture the underlying business reality. If not, we will adjust the accounting to eliminate GAAP issues and management biases.
3. Financial Analysis. We will evaluate current performance with accounting data and financial ratios.
4. Prospective Analysis: Forecasting. We will assess whether current firm performance is sustainable, and we will forecast future performance. In our forecasts, we will consider growth, profitability, and future competitive advantage.
5. Prospective Analysis: Valuation. We will convert our forecasts of future earnings and book values into an estimate of the firm’s current value.
In the second half of the course, we will apply the above framework to a variety of business valuation contexts, including IPOs, mergers, and equity-investment analyses.
- W 2:20 p.m.-5:35 p.m.
- W 6 p.m.-9:15 p.m.
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Instructor:
Thomas E Bourveau
Info - 3 points
Corporate Transactions and Fin
The main objective of Corporate Transactions and Financial Modelling is for you to acquire a lasting ability to successfully understand, analyze, model, value and creatively think about LBO, M&A, IPO and restructuring activities. We will: 1. explore structural, accounting, regulatory, taxation, institutional and process-related aspects of different transactions 2. develop advanced valuation and financial statements analysis skills 3. prepare full-blown transaction models with integrated B/S, I/S and CFS using Excel 2016. We use these models to study the feasibility of deals, to predict financial ratios and to explore liquidity and profitability consequences of different deal structures and assumptions. We use databases that are commonly used by practitioners and emphasize real-world applications. For example, you receive your own FactSet Desktop license including Excel add-in and we incorporate applications into the course. The overarching goal is to develop an advanced toolbox to succeed in a transactions-related role in IB, PE, consulting, investment management, corporate management or entrepreneurship.
- T 9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
- W 9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
- R 9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
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Instructor:
Anne Heinrichs
Info - 3 points
Accounting for Value
This course is about handling accounting information in value investing. The issue is straightforward: How do I infer value from such numbers as earnings, book value, cash flows, return on equity, and return on assets? What are the pitfalls? When can I be led astray? How do I make valid inferences? "Profitability" is an important valuation attribute, but does reported accounting profitability convey real profitability? If not, how do I handle the deficiency? The answers to these questions require, first, an understanding of the integrity of the numbers that financial statements report and, second, an understanding of what a "clean" number tells us and what it does not tell us. The first question is the issue of so-called "earnings quality." While we will be sensitive to the quality of the accounting in this courseand indeed develop some striking criticisms and make adjustmentsour focus will largely be on the second, the issue of appreciating the value implications of accounting numbers. (There is a detailed course on earnings quality at Columbia Business School, Earnings Quality and Fundamental Analysis, B8008.) Accounting numbers, used appropriately, are powerful aids to the value investor in understanding a business and the value in that business. However, they can be easily misused. A P/E ratio, for example, serves as an important input to a value investor, but the investor is in danger of being falsely cued if he or she does not appreciate what that ratio actually captures. A too-simple form of "value investing" trades on P/E and price-to-book (P/B) under the label, "Value versus Growth" investing, but the uninitiated is in danger of falling into the Value Trap. In this course you will understand the Value Trap and how to avoid it. More importantly, you will appreciate how a dedicated approach to value investing deals with accounting numbers to understand when price is different from value. Indeed, the course will show how to bring the appropriate (possibly adjusted) accounting numbers together to challenge the market price and thus avoid the greatest risk in investing, the risk of paying too much. The course title is that of my book, Accounting for Value. This easy-read develops the themes and the course flushes them out. By the end of the course, you should have the answers to the following questions: How do I understand the profitability of a business from the financial statements and what does that imply for the value of the business? Apple Inc. trades at a forward P/E of 11.5. What does that tell me? Is t
- M 2:20 p.m.-5:35 p.m.
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Instructor:
Stephen H Penman
Info - 3 points
Sustainability Reporting
Chal Mmt & Dis of Envr So
Broadly speaking, the goal of this class is to provide students with both the theoretical and practical knowledge to understand the current challenges in accounting for firms’ ESG goals. In this rapidly evolving field, the course will be structured in four modules:
- Module #1 reviews the need for sustainability accounting and provide an overview of the providers of ESG metrics and the limits of current
aggregated ESG data.
- Module #2 present various market-based mechanisms to create ESG standards
- Module #3 discusses regulatory initiatives to create ESG information for listed firms
- Module #4 departs from non-financial disclosure and discuss the limits of current accounting standards and introduce new developments to
incorporate ESG characteristics into traditional financial statements.
While ESG encompasses a vast body of topics, this class will draw examples and discuss about a diverse set of issues ESG, including carbon emissions, employees pay, employees labor-safety, and the role of consumers’ NGO, based on short examples or cases spanning different firms in different industries (e.g., wholesale, aviation) and different countries (e.g., USA, France, Japan).
This half-term course is composed of a mix of lectures, cases and online or in-person interventions by high profile industry guest speakers. The lectures are motivated by (1) rigorous recent academic studies drawing from the accounting literature, but also borrowing from adjacent fields including economics, finance, law and strategy and (2) practitioners notes and examples.
Who should take this course?
Students should take this course if they are interested in ESG in general and/or if they expect to use disclosure of non-financial information in their career. This is particularly relevant for students who want to pursue careers in finance (e.g., investment banking) where firms’ ESG footprint is becoming a scrutinized factor in M&A or investment decisions in general, as well as students going to careers in consulting where corporate decisions will more and more be benchmark against their ESG implications.
Please note that this course does not require students to have pre-existing knowledge about ESG.
- R 9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
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Instructor:
Thomas E Bourveau
Info - 1.5 points
Accounting for Consultants
This elective course covers accounting tools useful to consultants, as well as for students with an interest in a firm’s finance function, general management, or private equity.
There will be a particular focus on performance measurement and management.
Performance measurement is a key determinant of success for today’s companies that sell a wide range of products and services to a wide range of customers differentiated in their needs. While financial accounting (GAAP) information is a useful shortcut toward gaining some understanding of a firm’s financial health, consultants and managers need a more solid understanding of the firm’s strategy and mission, as well as disaggregated information that helps assess how the firm is performing along its strategic objectives.
There is overlap between this course and the half-semester course “Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A)” course. This course expands on many of the concepts taught in FP&A and supplements them with industry insights and guest speakers. For this reason, this course is mutually exclusive with the elective course “B8007 – Financial Planning & Analysis”. If you have taken FP&A, you will not be able to enroll in this course for credit. Please contact me immediately in case of such a conflict.
The following specific topics will be addressed:
• Profitability analysis to assess individual products
• Customer relationship management using customer lifetime value (CLV)
• Budgeting and variances
• Performance evaluation for profit centers and investment centers
• Performance-based pay: team incentives, relative performance evaluation, etc.
• Corporate governance: the C-suite and the role of compensation consultants
• The “War of Metrics”: Cash Flow, EVA, Balanced Scorecards, etc.
• Innovative ways to deviate from GAAP rules to better measure value creation
• Issues specific to multinational enterprises (MNEs), e.g., taxation
• Industry-specific insights: performance measurement in key industries
- MW 9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
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Instructor:
Tim Baldenius
Info - 3 points
(PhD) Analytical Topics in Acc
- T 2:20 p.m.-5:35 p.m.
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Instructor:
Tim Baldenius
Info - 3 points