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What Finance Is
What Finance Is
What courses to take depends a lot on your own background, interests, experience, strengths, and
weaknesses. Having taken the finance core will leave you with a solid understanding of the key
building blocks of real-world finance. The other core courses are crucial elements of this
foundation. Firm valuation, corporate finance, investment banking, and most sell-side jobs require
a real knowledge of GAAP accounting. Asset pricing, portfolio allocation, and risk management
are impossible without a real knowledge of economics and basic statistics. Furthermore, your in
depth exposure to international finance give you a comparative advantage (maybe even an
absolute advantage) in understanding today's trends, tomorrow's changes, and -- in particular -- the
impact of exchange rates -- that is, the "international" in international finance. Going beyond the
core, applications and the more practical and more specialized courses give you exposure to realworld experiences and a breadth of experiences. Business courses are particularly relevant for
integrating your finance knowledge into the decisions of the firm -- finance is a crucial business
input and firms are a key financial environment. Everything is tied together.
I obtained the following information from the Internet
Banking Investment, Commercial, and Insurance and Real Estate
Main Activities:
Valuation and company/segment analysis for mergers, spin-offs,
acquisitions, LBO's, and so forth.
Issuance and placement of securities such as loans, bonds, and equity
including corporate valuation, due diligence, credit analysis, security
design, and security valuation.
Risk management including security sales and structuring, client
advising, derivatives valuation, exposure determination (say to foreign
exchange fluctuations), VAR, and portfolio allocation.
Research/Strategy/Analysis of sectors, macro-trends, regions, or firms in
support of the above activities.
Consulting (Strategic/Valuation)
Main Financial Activities:
Project, business-line, market, and/or financial advice which all center
around valuation exercises designed to help the client make better decisions.
Management Consulting (and General Management)
Main Financial Activities:
Risk Management
Computer Simulations and Risk Assessment, Credit Analysis, Country Risk Analysis,
Options and Derivatives, Financial Modeling
Buy Side and Trading
Options and Derivatives, International Portfolio Management, Fixed Income Securities,
Hedge Fund Management, Foreign Exchange Markets
Sales
Transnational Negotiations, Financial Product Marketing, Options and Derivatives, Fixed
Income Securities, Foreign Exchange Markets, Topics in Financial Engineering