Our Institute's staff regularly offers the following courses. More information is available via Campus-Online and Moodle. 

 

Einführung in die BWL (WiMa)  -- offered in German -- (Bachelor)

This course covers the whole range of Business Administration. This includes decisions about the legal form, corporate governance & strategy, as well as ongoing business functions such as procurement, production, marketing, investments, human resources, accounting, and controlling.

 

Business Unit Strategy and Corporate Finance (Bachelor & Master of Finance)

The course deals with the interrelation of strategic considerations and corporate finance. For instance, we will also compare the pros and cons of different forms of capital (bank loans, bonds, equity, convertibles etc.) to fund growth. We will also discuss the different financial exit strategies (spin off, auction, leveraged buyout etc.) if a company decides to split-off a segment that is considered non-core by its management. We are mainly using the textbooks "Richard A. Brealey, Stewart C. Myers, and Franklin Allen: Principles of Corporate Finance, 9th edition and M. Grinblatt, and S. Titman: Financial Markets and Corporate Strategy."

 

Advanced Financial Intermediation (Master/Master of Finance)

Why are financial intermediaries such as banks and mutual funds different from other industries? How did Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy bring financial systems worldwide to the brink of collapse? What is the “shadow banking system” and how on earth are individual hedge fund managers able to earn more than one billion dollars per year? These questions are answered by various teaching forms such as classical lectures, talks by industry experts, academic paper presentations, presentations by students covering topical issues, and by solving problem sets and case studies.

 

Research in Finance (Master/Master of Finance)

This course is designed to prepare Master students for their empirical Master thesis. Both Finance institutes, the one run by Professor Löffler and ours, highly encourage students to take this prep course if they aim to write their thesis at these institutes!

The course comprises two parts: 1) The first is a hands-on introduction on how to use Stata, the most common statistical program in Financial Economics. Students will learn how to manage data, how to visualize and clean data, and how to run and interpret cross sectional and panel regressions. Students are required to solve several empirical problems on their own. 2) The second part consists of active and mandatory participation in the Finance group’s research seminar for doctoral students and short-term visitors- the biweekly Brown Bag Seminar. Students are required to provide one short review (2-3 pages) of one of the research presentations. The review should be written as an academic referee report and should thus concentrate on the contribution to the literature and a judgment of the empirical strategy.

 

Blockchain Fundamentals: Technology, Finance, Law (together with Prof. Dr. Heribert Anzinger and Prof. Dr. Frank Kargl; All kinds of Master programs/Master of Finance) < !NEW! >
The lecture covers blockchain fundamentals from three different angles. First, we cover the architecture and technical fundamentals of blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies (DLT). Second, we explain applications of the blockchain and other DLT on financial markets. We talk about new business models of decentralised finance and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Finally, we deal with the basic structures of the legal framework for applications of blockchain and other DLT in Europe.

 

 

Project class in Asset Management ("Anwendungsprojekt Finance"; Master/Master of Finance)  ­

Master students will develop their own equity investment strategies using advanced machine learning approaches using R. The course will combine lectures (offering key concepts in Backtesting, Machine Learning, and R) as well as hands-on empirical implementations of their own strategies. Student groups with successful backtest results will be invited to participate in the planned Ulm University Student Investment Initiative (U²SI²). Grades will be based on a written project report and a brief presentation.

 

In addition to the above lectures, external lecturer(s) offer the following course(s) if their schedule permits.

 

Valuation  -- offered in German -- (Bachelor)

The course is designated to general principles of valuation. It is covering different valuation approaches, such as discounted cash flow, "Ertragswertverfahren", valuation with multiples, and role of real options in valuation. It is also about specific issues in valuing companies, for example non-operating assets, corporate and personal taxes, pensions and other liabilities, relevant legal and institutional norms. The course is also including case studies about topics such as fairness opinions or squeeze-out valuation.