Business Administration

The course prepares students for a life as strategic planners, marketers, and communication professionals in a global environment. Companies working internationally are faced with the global-local dilemma. On the one hand they seek to reap the efficiency benefits of globally standardized advertising. On the other, national differences require specialized advertising to effectively reach target audiences in different markets. The course provides students with an understanding of the problems and opportunities facing people working with international advertising. Students are given the tools to understand the relationship between corporate marketing and communications, subsidiaries, the master ad agency, and local sub-agencies. In the course, students watch and analyze commercials and current marketing and communication trends, conduct international research and strategic planning, and adapt these strategies to the local markets.

This course explores the new role of brand activism as a tool to forge consumer-brand relationships, manage corporate brand reputation, and drive social and environmental impact. It examines both the promise and the pitfalls of brand activism and evaluates how storytelling and digital enhancement can support brand activism. The course covers how brands are increasingly embracing social, environmental, and political ideologies as a way to build their brand-centered identity and engage with various stakeholder groups. It explores this phenomena as an off-shoot of corporate social responsibility and more traditional branding strategies. It examines the corporate brand as the embodiment of the firm’s value position. After an introduction to what is meant by brand activism, the course moves to examine several planning issues, including how to connect with stakeholders, choosing values and causes that are authentic, and determining risk exposure. It then moves to explore how storytelling, digital enhancement, and partnerships can all magnify the impact of brand activism. 

Marketing begins and ends with the consumer, from identifying consumers' wants and needs to delivering customer satisfaction. Accordingly, this course examines a number of topics and areas that are essential for those seeking to understand and influence consumer behavior. Although theoretical concepts play an important role, the course focuses on the pragmatic implications for marketing practice, and, in particular, the formulation and implementation of marketing strategy.

Given the continuously growing impact of the European Union on business, attention to politics is warranted in international business studies. At the same time, governance in the EU is far from straightforward, as it is based on a very complex mixture of political principles, structures, and institutions. This course looks at the wider institutional environment of the firm and provides background for doing business in Europe.  This course is a good option for students aspiring to work for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or business practitioners in Europe. A creative, multidisciplinary approach is taken, using original and challenging literature from the literature on international business, comparative politics, and comparative economic systems. The course material assists in understanding past and current changes in the broader European business & politics landscape.

• -  Students will gain a basic structure about quantitative finance, learn the definition and application of various derivatives, and how to apply binomial trees to price financial derivatives.

• -  Students will learn trading strategies involving call and put options.

• -  Students will master how to apply risk measures such as Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall in risk management framework.

This course covers forwards, futures, swaps, and options. In Part I, students will have good knowledge of how forwards, futures and swaps work, how they are used, and how they are priced. In Part II, we will introduce the mechanics of option markets, properties of stock options, options on stock indices and currencies as well as various types of exotic options. In Part III, theories about binomial trees, Wiener processes, Ito’s Lemma, Black-Scholes-Merton Model will be further illustrated, and market risk measures will be covered.

This introductory course combines practical guidance and academic theory to provide students with a thorough grounding in the use of financial statements for investment analysis and banking. It addresses the key aspects of accounting relevant to equity analysts, mergers & acquisition (M&A) bankers, asset managers, and other capital market participants. The delivery of the course is based around short technical sessions reinforced with numerical exercises, practical case studies, press articles, and video extracts.  Additionally, the course involves guest speakers (in person or pre-recorded), such as a sell-side analyst and an investment banker, to help students understand the various financial services roles as well as the relevance of accounting information.