30526 - FINANCIAL ANALYSIS AND PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT

The first sessions of the course will be devoted to refresh contents and structures of fundamental financial reports (income statement, balance sheet, statement of cash flow) in order to create a common language and put in evidence pieces of information that will be used to carry out financial statement analysis. This will allow students without previous knowledge on topic to align to the rest of the class

The Course intends first to develop students’ skills in understanding, analyzing, and interpreting financial statements. Conceptually, the course emphasizes that producers and users of financial statements have different objectives and informational needs. At the same time, the course is applied in that it teaches students how to analyze actual financial statements data to make informed business decisions and assessments. The course assumes a good command of basic financial accounting topics, but the first sessions will be devote to create a common language on financial reports and financial measures (accounting based, market based, ESG based). Second this course is designed to broaden and deepen students’ conceptual and technical understanding of accounting as it is used for management purposes. The emphasis in the course is on financial controls, which provides the dominant form of control in the vast majority of decentralized organizations. This module provides support in business decisions, evaluation of organizational performance, or in evaluation of others (and/or be evaluated) using financial and non-financial information

The course is made up by two parts. Macro content items follow.

Part 1:

- Undrstanding financial statements

- Fundamental analysis

- Growth strategy and financial tensions: the logic behind target setting

- Market based measures, ESG and integrated reporting

Part 2:

- Management and control

- Financial responsibility

- Incentive systems

- Remedy to the miopia problem

- Uncontrollable factors

Understand balance sheets, income statements and statement of cash flow.

Undestand the fundamental financial performance measures used at company level

Understand models that link corporate strategy to financial performance targets

Understand some metrics Market based, and ESG based

Understand Financial responsibility structures

Understand Performance measures used in managerial evaluations

Undestand the structure of Incentive systems

Be able to read financial reports

Be able to carry out a fundamental analysis that include financial and non financial elements

Be able to link different performance dimensions

Be able to connect performance targets to strategy

Be able to evaluate the adeguacy of the performance measurement system in practice

Be able to suggest improvements in accounting systems

• Face-to-face lectures
• Exercises (exercises, database, software etc.)
• Case studies /Incidents (traditional, online)
• Individual assignments
• Group assignments

The course alternate traditional lectures to case and exercices, to get practice with topics covered

Final evaluation will be based on:

- individual assignments

- group assignments

- Final exam

see detailed syllabus

Final evaluation will be based on:

- individual assignments

- Final exam

see detailec syllabus

Teaching materials (slides and readings) both for in class activities than home activities will be uploaded on Blackboard Platform

Check Blackboard daily for class announcements and lecture notes/homework assignments.