Finance and Accounting

Accounting - Dr. Karen K. Nelson, Professor of Accounting.

The accounting portion focuses on accounting and builds the foundation for participants to understand the significance and use of information in financial reports relative to management decisions. The learning objectives include identifying the relationships between the primary financial statements, the significance of accrual accounting concepts and the differences between income, cash flow, assets and expenses and the meaning of the terms and data found in financial reports.

Finance - Dr. George Kanatas, Professor of Finance.

The finance portion deals with managing growth, earnings and cash, and with a firm's weighted average cost of capital and its relation to both Economic Value Added (EVA) and capital expenditure analysis. The learning objectives include gaining an understanding of the effect of growth on earnings and cash and how to determine optimal growth, the study of how to determine a firm's cost of capital and how it relates to the distinction between earnings and economic profit.

Financial Statement Analysis - Dr. Brian Rountree, Assistant Professor of Accounting.

The financial statement analysis portion concentrates the knowledge garnered from the first two sessions in understanding how companies' strategies and operational execution are revealed in financial statements. We develop a systematic performance evaluation methodology that provides the foundation for assessing current and future economic prospects, along with linking this information to valuation. The learning objectives include developing an understanding of earnings management techniques and evaluating the implications for future performance, introducing the concept of ratio analysis and illustrate how to adjust ratios for differences in accounting techniques and operational decisions, creating a systematic method for evaluating firm performance using publicly available financial statements and linking this to forecasts of future performance.