University of Commerce Luigi Bocconi

The course presents the structure of European and US financial markets and discusses the rules and principles that govern trading and price formation in the most advanced electronic trading platforms and auction markets. The course discusses how to trade securities on electronic order book markets like the London Stock Exchange, Borsa Italiana, Nyse-Euronext, NASDAQ, NYSE, or alternative trading systems (lit and dark pools). During the course, students participate in a trading simulation game prepared to practice real-time trading in the market. The course covers: market microstructure and research objectives, trading process, continuous vs batch auction, orders and order properties, market participants and the role of market makers, market structure, trading sessions (call and continuous auction markets), execution systems (order-driven, quote-driven, and hybrid markets), trading rules for order driven markets, price formation, matching rules, guidelines for price monitoring, price discovery, circuit breakers and market crashes, pricing and trading fees (make-take vs symmetric pricing structure), algorithmic trading, and high frequency trading (HFT), regulatory debate (U.S. and Europe) on dark liquidity, tick size, trading fees, and closing auction volume.

Family firms - firms that are owned, managed and controlled by a family, or a limited number of individuals – represent the vast majority of all firms, and major contributors to a country’s employment, GDP, wealth, and business knowledge. This course aims at developing students’ skills in analyzing the specific features of family firms, assessing their key problems and opportunities, and creatively proposing strategic and organizational solutions. The course is targeted to the next generation of controlling-family members, to students who may be willing to start their career in a family or private firm, and to those who plan to consult or provide professional services to family-controlled companies. Understanding the unique features of these firms is essential to develop a successful leadership career in such organizational settings or, more broadly, to understand the strategic logic of family-controlled competitors, suppliers, and customers. Participants are challenged to improve their personal skills in the areas of communication, conflict resolution, diagnostic assessment, solutions finding, and writing academic papers or case-based materials. This highly interactive course includes active simulations, role plays, videos, guest speakers, and real-case discussion. 

This course provides an introduction to the most important aspects of corporate finance. The objective is to acquire the essential skills necessary to actively deal with the corporate finance activities of an internationally operating firm. The course explores both investing and financing decisions, focusing on their role in the creation of shareholder value. The course covers four main parts. The first part covered is the value of a firm, including financial instruments, valuation concepts, and decision rules. The second part is risk and return, including theory, empirical evidence, and applications to capital budgeting. The third part of the course is financing decisions and market efficiency. The fourth part of the course is payout policy, capital structure, and valuation. Topics covered include: finance and the financial manager; valuing bonds and common stocks; NPV and investment decisions; risk, return and the opportunity cost of capital; capital budgeting and risk; efficient markets and behavioral finance; payout policy, debt policy, and capital structure; financing and valuation. Students attending this course should be familiar with the basics of mathematics, statistics, financial mathematics, accounting, and financial markets and institutions. In particular, students should have reasonable knowledge of the basics in financial mathematics such as the time value of money, annuities, and perpetuities; basics in statistics such as probabilities, variances/covariances, and ordinary least squares; basics in accounting such as being able to read information contained in balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements.