Help organisations with financial and investment decision-making

Companies of any size continuously face decisions on how to raise and invest money. The oft-stated primary goal of publicly traded corporations is to maximize returns for its shareholders, but there are many different factors that influence returns. In the Corporate Finance track you gain insight into how corporate value depends on their capital structure, terms of financing raised, quality of investment opportunities, and corporate governance. You also will learn how to estimate the value of firms, and of corporate actions like equity offerings or mergers and acquisitions.

If you are interested in pursuing a career in corporate treasury departments, consulting firm or investment banking divisions that advise companies, or venture capital funds, this is the track for you. It also is a great track at preparing students to organise a start-up business model.

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