Financial Accounting

Prof. Gerard McHugh
Required Core Course
Fall -- 1 credit
 
The course has three main objectives. First, to provide participants with a thorough grounding in the measurement principles underlying financial statement construction. Second, to develop participants´ skills in assessing and evaluating an enterprise´s financial performance from its financial statements. Third, to lay the essential foundations for subsequent courses in international financial reporting and finance. You will learn:

- How to make sense of the financial information produced by enterprises
- How the financial statements reveal a firm´s operating strategies and performance
- How day-to-day operational decisions are reflected in the financial statements of a firm
- Why the financial structure is important
- How the providers of equity and debt capital view firms

Topics to be discussed are as follows:
- Income Statement
- Balance Sheet
- Cash Flow Statement
- Profitability analysis
- Capital structure analysis
- Liquidity analysis;

Financial Accounting is delivered over five days. The class sessions of the course (Monday through Friday) are designed to build one on the other. The course builds by (i) developing skills in reading financial statements, (ii) developing your capacity to analyse business fundamentals from financial statements and (iii) helping you to understand the valuation of enterprises. This is an applied course and is conducted using the financial statements of well-known international companies.  This course will prepare you for later offerings in the Finance & Accounting track.