This course introduces students to the basics of corporate finance and financial valuation and builds a solid understanding of financial markets and securities. This course focuses on what is corporate finance and how financial assets and firms are valued in financial markets. Its goal is to help the student’s ability to use financial statement information and related disclosures to evaluate the underlying economics of a corporation. Course participants examine the company’s past and current performance, and its competitive environment by collecting, analyzing and interpreting data from the firm’s financial database. Students develop a financial model of the firm, in the form of pro forma financial statements, to forecast the firm’s future performance. These projections in turn become the inputs to the valuation techniques, which include discounted cash flow models and residual income (or abnormal earnings). Credits: 4