University of Commerce Luigi Bocconi

This course develops an in-depth knowledge of the venture capital (VC) industry in order to get students be able to carry out an investment analysis in a proper way, taking into consideration all the specific terms and features that affect a VC deal from the investor’s perspective. Moreover, students who attend the course should be able to enter in touch with a real VC deal, to embrace the investor’s angle and to put in practice the know how learnt during the course. The course is split in two parts. The first part is focused on financial features that mark target companies for VC, the VC industry characteristics and the management of VC companies. The second part devotes attention to carry out a comprehensive analysis of an investment opportunity from the VC investor’s point of view. Topics covered include: what is VC and why it exists; what differs entrepreneurial finance from corporate finance; why are VC target firms special, and why and when are they not able to raise capital in the debt market; which are the solutions offered by venture capitalists to the firm’s financial needs, and the relationships between the entrepreneur (the firm) and the outside investor (the VC company); how to read and analyze a business plan from a target company, and business models and revenue forecast; how to invest: organizational framework, strategies, and investment vehicles; investor categories who place funds in the VC industry (financial institutions and pension funds, family offices, corporations, government and local authorities, and informal investors); how to regulate the relationship between general and limited partners ring fenced in investment schemes: disclosure and accountability, incentives schemes, and how to share returns between parties; investment criteria and investment styles (round-financing, milestones, venture debt, portfolio leverage, and exit way); investment valuation: valuation criteria, relevant cash flow, and cost of capital measures; investment valuation: valuation model, and explicit and implicit values; how to put valuation model in practice; and investment decision process: terms of the deal, share price, expected IRR, and investment recommendation. The course recommends students have a background in Financial Mathematics, Accounting, and Corporate Finance as a prerequisite.

This course covers the most important areas of financial economics and investments. The course explores how financial markets work and how they price financial securities and assets. As witnessed in the recent 2008-2009 financial crisis, financial market risks can have spillovers to the whole macroeconomy. Therefore, to understand macroeconomic risks, it is important to have a solid understanding of how financial markets work. The course discusses topics including portfolio selection, equilibrium asset pricing, arbitrage, fixed income securities, and derivatives. Students are required to have completed courses in calculus and statistics as a prerequisite for this course.

The banking industry is changing widely and consistently. Technology is playing an increasing role in the financial services industry, offering new opportunities to make new competitors - namely FinTechs and BigTechs - enter the financial services market, empowering existing players and threatening the way incumbents’ business models are changing. The course exposes students to this fast-growing intersection between technology and finance, under a double perspective: disruption versus evolution. Also covering the juncture of modern technology and banking. The curriculum is organized by vertical-product areas that are the spectrum of concepts driving innovations of the principal financial intermediation functions. They are also those that are most active and most prone to innovation through start-ups: money and payments, lending, saving, and investment. For each area, the course analyzes the marketplace, the incumbents, the new business cases, and strategies of the incoming technology-driven players with an emphasis on the underlying economics, technology applied, and the way competition is changing its features. Students develop a theoretical and practical understanding of the forces transforming the banking and financial services industry at an international level.

After defining the contexts of the retail sector, the course focuses on the strategic and operational choices related to the configuration and management of distribution channels, and the management of retail companies analyzed with a dynamic-evolutional perspective, and through the completion of a project on distribution innovation. The course is divided into three parts. (1) The key elements of a distribution channel (such as protagonists and flows) as well as its main economic functions are described. The retailers’ key management practices and their offer development process are discussed. (2) Focus on channel management, pointing out the main choices regarding: channel design, multichannel management, and trade marketing. (3) Analysis of the historical evolution of distribution channels and its stages by adopting an international perspective, and insights on emerging trends. These include current innovations in retailing, in particular e-tailing and retail branding. This is a graduate level course only available to graduate students.