FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
[These pages constitute a preliminary edition of the course as of January 2001. The content is not yet entirely edited. Additions of more graphs, examples, questions, assignments, citations and new findings are planned. Your comments and corrections are welcome. Those most useful will be incorporated in Comments section of each chapter. Continuous upgrading and updating of this material is our goal. I guess, our work will never be finished.]
Content:
This is an advanced professional course intended for individuals working in banks, investment companies, stock brokers or large corporate finance departments. There are three distinct parts: the first four chapters review approaches to valuation of financial assets; the next nine chapters cover one aspect of the firm operations and draw conclusions on the implications for the value of the firm to investors; the last two chapters incorporate economic forecasting to assessment of firm's strategy. There is a general theme repeated through all the chapters that there are many different purposes of analysis of a company's financial condition and the focus changes accordingly, but the methods remain essentially the same. All well known analytical methods are presented with examples showing their use, and with, just as importantly, a discussion of their limitations.
Objectives:
After completing this course a student should
- be able to take certification exams to become a financial analyst
- understand the context in which financial analysis is conducted
- be familiar with all the commonly used techniques of financial analysis
- know the importance of external economic and industry factor, and how to incorporate them in the analysis
- be able to make recomme ...