Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular term. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• QST FE 450: Private Equity: Leveraged Buyouts
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (QSTFE445 or 449) - Exposes students to, and demystifies, the world of Private Equity (PE). The focus is centered on LBOs and their position in the "alternative asset" class. Students learn about the activities of a PE firm including formation, fund- raising, investing (including deal structure, terms, due diligence, and governance), and exiting. Also discussed are what other industry sectors serve or are affected by PE and who the players are. Case study and class participation will be the primary modes of learning.
• QST FE 454: Investment Banking
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (QSTFE323) - Provides an overview of the economic functions provided by investment banks including a history of the industry, current events, and the difference between large, full service investment banks and smaller, boutique firms. Heavy emphasis on pro forma analysis and Initial Public Offering and M&A valuation techniques. Topics include: What do investment bankers do' What are the different types of analyses performed by investment bankers' What are the various types of financial securities' What is the underwriting process and how are securities priced' How are companies valued' How are potential synergies valued' The course will focus on the issuing process and pricing for equity, fixed income, and equity-linked securities. The course will also focus on the role of investment banks in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and other restructurings. Additional topics include equity research, capital markets industry regulations, as well as typical career paths and opportunities.
• QST FE 455: Financing New Ventures
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (QSTSM132, or QSTSI250, or QSTSI480, or COMFT591, or SHAHF307); Sophomore standing - Students will be expected to have mastered key finance concepts including financial statement analysis, NPV, IRR and basic option pricing theory prior to entering the course. Introduction to financing sources for start-up firms, including angel funding, venture capital financing, boot-strapping, debt and other sources. Focus on capital structure analysis, capitalization tables, payoff diagrams, term sheets, equity incentives, cash flow projections and negotiating with investors. Students are expected to prepare case studies for class discussion and become familiar with current events in the financial news about start-up company financings.
• QST FE 456: Fixed Income Analysis
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (QSTFE323) - Covers the analytic techniques used in fixed-income markets to value and measure risk on traditional fixed-rate bonds, floating-rate notes, bonds having embedded options (callable and putable bonds), structured notes, and interest rate derivatives used to manage bond portfolios (primarily interest rate swaps, caps, and floors). Extensive use is made of Excel spreadsheet analysis, including the development of a binomial term structure model to value securities. Focus is on the impact of counterparty and issuer credit risk in fixed-income valuation.
• QST FE 458: Equities and Securities Analysis
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (QSTFE323) - Students will be taught the fundamental skills in how to analyze a company and determine its suitability for investment. This course will teach the value-based approach to company analysis, which focuses on assessing a company's competitive advantage and its return profile. Key topics include competitive advantage, return on invested capital, financial modeling and financial statement analysis, and valuation.
• QST FE 459: Programming for Investments
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: CAS CS108 or CS111; QST FE445 - The course will teach students how to use computational techniques to implement financial algorithms for security pricing and risk analysis including, bonds, stocks, and options. This will be a rigorous, hands-on programming course to prepare students for quantitative jobs in finance. The overall objective of the course is to enhance the students' understanding of the well-known financial models used to price securities including bonds and options and to evaluate the risk and return characteristics of stocks and portfolios. After the course, students will have a deeper understanding of investment portfolios, risk management techniques that use derivatives, and arbitrage strategies. Additionally, students will become comfortable with a modern programming language based on functional and object-oriented programming which will enhance their job opportunities in a variety of fields beyond finance.
• QST FE 460: Equity Analysis for Strategic Decision Making
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (QSTFE323) - This course is specifically designed to appeal to students who have a strong interest in both strategy and financial analysis. The focus of the class will be to bring financial analysis to the study of a company's strategy and learn how to analyze a company's financial statements to help evaluate the sustainability of a company's competitive advantage. This course utilizes that case-based approach in its teaching method and encourages active class participation.
• QST FE 462: Business Valuation
  Undergraduate Pre-requisite: QST FE323.- The objective of this course is to understand how companies are valued and provide a framework to approach valuation within any field of finance. Valuation is a critical tool and technique that is required across all sectors within the field of finance: corporate finance, venture capital, private equity, investment banking, and public equity investing. Yet, despite the differences in each of these areas, the approach to valuation is consistent across all disciplines. The guiding principle underlying this course is that value is created when a company earns a return on capital that exceeds its cost of capital. A company¿s value is predominantly driven by two factors: the spread between its return on invested capital and cost of capital, and the company¿s ability to generate unit growth. Business Valuation will provide the skills necessary to evaluate a company¿s business model, analyze published financial statements, convert these financial statements into a model that forecasts its financial statements, assess its cost of capital, and most importantly how to use these inputs to determine its valuation.
• QST FE 469: Real Estate Finance
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (QSTFE323) - Provides an introduction to and an understanding of real estate finance. Draws together and considers major functional areas including: structuring, ownership, finance, taxation, property valuation and analysis. The course provides a framework for decision making in the real estate investment and finance fields. The course is specifically designed to offer students interested in real estate careers a foundation from which to build. 4 cr.
• QST FE 498: Directed Study: Finance
  Directed study in Finance. 2 or 4 cr. Application available on Undergraduate Program website.
• QST FE 711: Finance 1
  This course begins by briefly introducing students to some fundamental concepts in financial theory, including the separation of investment, cash flow and consumption decisions for firms; the time-value of money, net present value, and the associated impetus towards value-based decision making; as well as arbitrage and the law of one price, and the idea of efficient markets. Students will then dig deeper into the mechanics of discounting, compounding, and calculating free cash flows, giving them tools to make value-based decisions about whether to undertake or cancel a project within a firm; value a share, or acquire a company, using a given discount rate.
• QST FE 712: Finance 2
  Graduate Prerequisites: (QSTFE711) - The course begins with a brief introduction to some basic financial securities (stocks and bonds) and how to calculate their risks, returns, and correlations. We will then study the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) of asset pricing model, a theory setting out the required returns on financial assets, and its implications for how to invest in financial markets. We will use the CAPM to derive a required return on investment, which we will then use as to calculate a weighted average cost of capital (WACC), which will be the discount rate used to assess the net present value of business investments. The WACC can be used to find the present discounted value of a firm, or of a potential acquisition, as well as to determine the net present value (NPV) of a project under consideration for investment by a firm. The course will finish with a case study valuation of one such project or acquisition, using knowledge on the calculation of free cash flows from FE711 and of the calculation of the discount rate from FE712.
• QST FE 713: Finance 3
  Graduate Prerequisites: (QSTFE712) - This course extends students' understanding of corporate valuation beyond that acquired by allowing for valuing firms with different capital structures (e.g., what happens to valuation when a firm levers up'). This practical knowledge is built upon an analytical framework about the costs and benefits of different forms of financing (debt, equity, hybrid securities) in different industries, time periods, and circumstances. When should firms use debt financing, and when equity' What is the impact of paying dividends; when should dividends be preferred to share buybacks, and when should cash be retained in the firm rather than paid out' This course will give students an insight into the answers to these and similar questions.
• QST FE 722: Financial Management
  Graduate Prerequisites: QST MO712 or MO713, QST AC710 or AC711 (previous or concurrent) - The objective of this course is to introduce the students to the theory and practice of corporate finance, and to provide the students with a set of analytical tools necessary to answer the most important questions related to firms' valuation and investment decision making first under certainty and then under uncertainty. The course can be divided into the following three building blocks: valuation, investment decisions, and the relation between risk and return.
• QST FE 723: Introduction to Corporate Finance
  The objective of this course is to introduce students to the theory and practice of corporate finance, and to provide students with a set of concepts and tools necessary to answer the most important questions related firms' valuation as well as investment and financing decisions, both under certainty and under uncertainty. The course covers time value of money, free cash flow, net present value, risk-adjusted discounting using the capital asset pricing model, weighted average cost of capital, effects of financial leverage on firm value, and valuation methods with leverage to determine the value of a project or firm.
• QST FE 740: Statistics for Finance
  This course provides a rigorous foundation in probability and statistics, covering estimation, hypothesis testing, and confidence intervals in depth. As finance relies on probability models to measure and manage risk, students will apply modern statistical methods to real financial data, learning to estimate key parameters and assess model validity.
• QST FE 747: Data Analytics in Finance
  Pre-requisite: QSTFE 740. This course equips students with essential data analysis and visualization skills using tools like Python, with applications in finance. Students will learn statistical modeling, financial data processing, and enhance decision-making through analytics. The course prepares master’s students in statistics and quantitative methods for sophisticated financial analysis and forecasting.
• QST FE 820: Corporate Financial Management
  Graduate Prerequisites: (QSTFE712 OR QSTFE722) - This course provides an in-depth analysis of financial considerations relating to corporate growth. It addresses the setting of financial and corporate goals in terms of maximizing shareholder wealth and relationships among working capital, debt levels, capital costs, dividend policy, growth and the value of the firm. It also considers the requisite financial analysis associated with mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcy.
• QST FE 822: Fixed Income Markets
  Graduate Prerequisites: (QSTFE712 OR QSTFE722) - This is a course primarily on fixed-income debt securities and markets. Emphasis is placed on the factors that determine bond yields, factors such as the coupon and maturity structure, liquidity, credit risk, and tax status of the security, and on measures of return and risk, statistics such as the yield to maturity, horizon yield, duration, and convexity. We will cover government debt (Treasuries and municipals), corporate bonds (investment-grade and high-yield), agency (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and mortgage-backed debt created via securitization (i.e., collateralized mortgage obligations). We will emphasize how interest rate and credit derivatives are used to manage portfolios of fixed-income securities.
• QST FE 823: Investments
  Graduate Prerequisites: (QSTFE712 OR QSTFE722) - Introduction to the investment management process. Defining investment objectives and constraints. Introduction to Modern Portfolio Theory, CAPM, Fama- French factors, APT, efficient markets, stock, bond and option valuation models. Introduction to forwards and swaps and their applications within investment strategies. Active and passive investment strategies, fundamental analysis, trading practices, and performance evaluation. Introduction to the role of futures and options in hedging and speculation. Arbitrage and hedge fund strategies. Understanding the assumptions underlying the different approaches and their limitations. Topics related to current events and the recent financial crisis.