Corporate Financial Strategy
Learn how to raise and allocate capital for optimal financial management.
Enroll Now Customize for Organizations
At a Glance
- Enrollment:
- Open Enrollment
- Length:
- 8 weeks
Upcoming Dates
December Start
February Start
Students may register up to 7 days after the course start.
Create successful blueprints that increase shareholder value by maximizing return on investment.
The University of Chicago’s eight-week Corporate Financial Strategy course will teach you to evaluate levels of risk and rates of return on corporate investments and resource allocations. You will also learn to recognize potential threats and opportunities impacting your organization and use these insights to create and implement successful financial strategies.
Designed For
Designed for business professionals who want to refresh and expand their understanding of accounting and corporate finance principles.
Learning Objectives to Achieve Financial Success
Thriving businesses know that implementing a business strategy in isolation is not enough. Corporate financial strategies that complement business plans are critical to an organization’s success.
After completing the course, you will be able to:
- Develop a strategic short-term plan for your organization.
- Optimize capital management.
- Leverage your knowledge of long-term financing, valuing equities, capital cost, and structure.
- Recognize the time value of money, risk, and reward.
- Navigate the decision-making process for raising and allocating capital.
- Earn a credential certifying completion from the University of Chicago and become part of the UChicago network.
Ready to Take Your Career to the Next Level?
Register today and unite your professional practice with our distinctive blend of academic rigor and real-world application.
Enroll NowCorporate Financial Strategy Curriculum
You will learn to:
- Describe an organization’s main activities: conducting operations, establishing goals and strategies, making investments, and obtaining financing.
- Define and work with the core statements organizations prepare to measure and report on financial performance: balance sheet and cash-flow and income statements.
- Examine mergers and acquisitions, financial decision-making, debt, and corporate restructuring in a global context.
Online Format Features
- Self-paced interactive learning modules with a variety of engaging learning activities, assignments, and resources.
- Live sessions that bring you, your peers, and your instructor together to learn collaboratively about the current state of the field, engage with real-world problems, and explore authentic solutions.
- Continuous support from your instructional assistant, who will accompany you on your journey through the content, answer your questions, and provide feedback on your work.
Weekly course schedule
Recognize the finance manager’s role in developing corporate strategy. Use the most common frameworks in strategic analysis to make decisions about corporate financial strategy. Determine key assumptions for corporate financial strategy based on current economic, market, and industry conditions, and the company’s stage of development.
Identify types of financial reports and their uses, including how to access financial information used in financial decision-making. Examine accounting rules and principles through a corporate finance lens. Handle financial statements for analysis. Model financial forecasts based on key assumptions from the strategic analysis and past performance.
Use the key financial ratios (activity, liquidity, solvency, and profitability) to build your finance tool kit for analyzing company financial performance. Calculate and analyze the components of the DuPont model and their implications for corporate financial strategy. Examine and analyze the key short-term financial management decisions and the impact on company strategy.
Apply core finance concepts, such as time value of money, risk and return, and present value to corporate finance.
Identify the main types of projects in capital budgeting. Model a basic capital budgeting project by developing the input data and selecting the appropriate Excel function. Determine and apply the relevant decision-making criteria to a basic capital budgeting project using Excel.
Explain the theoretical framework of capital structure. Compare and contrast the two main instruments for raising capital: debt and equity. Calculate the present value of debt and equity, and estimate the weighted average cost of capital for a company. Identify how companies use funds through dividend policies in the context of the overall corporate financial strategy.
Define the types of leverage for corporate financial strategy and their implications for restructuring. Calculate operating, financial, and total leverage for a company. Compare and contrast corporate and debt restructuring.
Distinguish between the two main categories of valuation models. Analyze a company in the context of a strategic valuation framework. Perform a strategic company valuation and communicate the key findings.
Earn a Credential in Corporate Financial Strategy
After successful completion of this course, participants will receive credentials certified by the University of Chicago including a digital badge to recognize their achievement.
Meet Your Instructor
Our highly trained instructors are courageous thinkers and passionate leaders who leverage years of industry expertise and up-to-date knowledge of terminology, tools, and trends to deliver an unparalleled learning experience. Through their rigorous discourse, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and field-shaping contributions, they create practical solutions and pioneering innovations that enrich our world.
This instructor teaches this course regularly. Please speak to your enrollment advisor if you wish to know who the current teacher is.
Borislava Karageorgieva, CFA, MBA, PAHM
Senior Finance Professional
Borislava Karageorgieva is a corporate finance expert with international experience in financial licensure compliance and regulatory analysis, mergers and acquisitions, angel investing and entrepreneurship, and board governance.
She is the board president of the Chicago Booth Angels Network of...
Career Outlook
Financial roles hold four of the top ten positions in US News and World Report's Best Business Jobs for 2022: financial manager (#2), management analyst (#6), actuary (#7), and business operations manager (#9). High earning potential and opportunities to work on high-priority projects in a forever-changed business landscape are just some of the compelling career drivers in corporate finance today.
The average annual base pay for a treasurer in the United States.
The percentage of graduate-level business school students interested in a career in finance.
The number of new jobs that will be created in business and financial operations from 2021 to 2031.
Potential Job Titles for Professionals in Corporate Finance
- Auditor
- Benefits Manager
- Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
- Controller
- Corporate Accountant
- Cost Analyst
- Financial Planning and Analysis Manager
- Financial Analyst
- Investor Relations Manager
- Real Estate Manager
- Risk Manager
- Treasurer
How Do I Get Started?
- Complete the form on the registration page.
- Pay the tuition fee through our secure gateway.
- Receive a welcome email with your login information for the virtual campus.
- Gain access to the course content prior to the start date.
Of Interest
Professional Certificate in Strategic Financial Management
Unlock impactful financial decision-making for success in modern business.