NOTE: Because there is considerable overlap between the fall course, Corporate Finance: Corporate Financial Operations (CFO) 1416, and the spring course, Strategies for Value Creation (SVC) 1417, students cannot take both of them.

Career Focus

This course provides a general management perspective on corporate finance and is designed to improve your ability to make strategic and operating decisions that create value. It should appeal to students who want to work as part of senior leadership teams, particularly finance executives; as strategy consultants or investment bankers who advise organizations; or as private equity, public equity, venture capital, or hedge fund investors. The course should also appeal to students who simply want to deepen their understanding of corporate finance and how finance concepts can be effectively applied within a wide range of organizations.

Educational Objectives

The goal of the course is to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and judgment required to make good strategic, operating, investment, and financing decisions. The course emphasizes the development of practical insights rather than formal theories. We will cover the shortcomings of the frameworks developed in RC Finance 1 and 2. We will discuss how the analytical tools developed in those courses relate to ideas in other courses and how they can be applied to address a broad set of business decisions. We will study the optimal design of processes that are key to an organization’s success, including strategic planning, forecasting, capital allocation, budgeting, risk management, and investor relations.

Course Content and Organization

As a consequence of differences in perspectives, finance leaders and other operators often fail to collaborate effectively. Finance teams focus on the value implications of core business decisions. However, many fail to recognize considerations that lie beyond financial ones. Furthermore, many do a poor job applying finance frameworks and reach incorrect conclusions. Other leaders often focus on different issues like delighting customers, developing talent, or innovating. These other leaders frequently have limits in their understanding of finance which prevent them from effectively engaging the finance function.

The finance divide between the finance team and other operators can generate a number of problems. For example, if finance teams are not sufficiently included in the strategic planning process, firms might embrace a strategy that is not tied to a reasonable set of assumptions and projections. More generally, raising and allocating capital effectively requires strong collaboration across many roles.

This course aims to prepare students to bridge the finance divide. It focuses on the core finance activities performed within organizations. These often are run by the CFO. This focus intends to expose you to what these activities are, to engage you in rich discussions about the key considerations behind fundamental choices, and to teach you financial decision-making frameworks and processes that firms often use. The key modules include:

• Measuring and Driving Performance
• Forecasting
• Managing Cash and Source of Funding
• Managing Risk
• Managing Investment, Divestitures, and Portfolios of Businesses

Nearly all class sessions will be case based. We will have numerous guests over the course of the semester, most of whom are HBS graduates. In addition to hearing from several case protagonists, we will be joined by subject matter experts on topics we will discuss. Many of the guests will have held the CFO role at some point in their career. In the past, guests have included Amrita Ahuja, COO and CFO of Block; Adam Aron, CEO of AMC; Amy Hood, CFO of Microsoft; Jonathan Mariner, former CFO of Major League Baseball; Peter Baldwin, CEO of birddogs; and numerous other senior executives. We will use part of our time with these guests to discuss their career paths and explore career options.

Copyright © 2024 President & Fellows of Harvard College. All Rights Reserved.