Help organisations with financial decision-making

Companies of any size continuously face financial decisions. The oft-stated primary goal of corporations is to maximise returns for its shareholders, but getting there involves thousands of possibilities. During the Corporate Finance track you explore such decisions at length. You will gain insight in the framework for corporate financial decision-making related to capital structure, valuation, funding, corporate restructuring (mergers and acquisitions) and corporate governance.

Do you have a sharp mind and a fascination with numbers and governance? Do you see yourself working with a bank or a consultancy firm? Then this is your track within the Finance master’s programme.

Why choose the Corporate Finance track?

1. Beside the 6 general courses of the MSc Finance in your curriculum, you will have 3 courses with focus on financial decision-making within corporate organisations.
2. You will be lectured by professors and experts working in a wide range of financial organisations and fields. Therefore, you have access to up-to-date cases and learnings from the field of corporate finance.
3. After graduation, you have an excellent job prospect at positions as e.g. financial analyst, investment banker or financial director at (inter)national hedge funds or in private banking.

Track-specific courses

Apart from the 6 general courses of the full programme, you will follow 3 track-specific courses and electives.

Contemporary issues

You will discuss and learn how to analyse a wide range of recent company decisions. Recent examples include:

• In February 2019, Japanese carmaker Honda announced plans to shut the plant in Swindon (UK). What was the rationale behind this decision? What was the importance of Brexit in this decision? What was the role of Brexit on the economic and transaction exposure to the currency risk of Honda?    
• Spotify went public April 3 on the NYSE. Instead of paying investment banks high fees to facilitate an IPO, Spotify followed an unconventional alternative: direct listing of its shares on the market. What is the rationale behind this strategy? What are the main advantages/disadvantages? To what extent could this strategy be adopted by more companies in the future?
• Amazon recently announced its plans to begin air delivery of packages using drones. What are the  potential revenues and expenses of this strategy relative to truck-based deliveries? Is this strategy likely to succeed?  
• Alibaba recently announced a record-breaking number of sales as part of China's annual ‘Singles Day’ shopping event. However, the sales figures do not seem to match up with reasonable estimates of internet users in China or Alibaba's ability to process shipments and electronic payments. We work through a case on Alibaba that hedge fund manager John Hempton of Bronte Capital used during job interviews.

Career prospects

Graduates of the Master's in Finance/Corporate Finance track have excellent job prospects for positions as financial analyst, investment banker, consultant, controller, CFO, treasurer, financial director and financial expert with Dutch and international companies, such as:

• Philips 
• Booking.com
• ING
• ABN AMRO Bank

• McKinseyPWC