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Master of Finance Core Courses

RSM4113HS – Macro Economics for Finance Professionals

The objective of the course is to provide an applied background into macroeconomic issues that are relevant to finance professionals. Towards that end, the course presents a macroeconomic framework which will allow for a detailed examination of a series of interrelated topics, with a particular focus on monetary, fiscal and international economic developments with implications for financial sector developments.

RSM4216HF – Financial Reporting and Financial Statement Analysis

Understanding financial statements is crucial for succeeding in management in general and finance in particular. Whether you specialize in investment banking, wealth management, portfolio management, commercial banking, private equity or even trading you will need to understand financial statements. The course assumes that students have accounting knowledge at least at the level of an introductory financial accounting course. At the end of the term students should have an enhanced ability able to read and interpret financial statements at a fairly advanced level. They should know both what the statements tell us and, even more importantly, what they don’t. The pedagogical approach of the course is to use interactive classes, problems and cases.

RSM4220HS – Advanced Accounting Topics for Finance

This course emphasizes the theme of the “Accounting Art of War” (paraphrasing Sun Tzu. The second theme that this course embraces is the use of data analytics for financial statement analysis (e.g., the detection of accounting manipulations). The class emphasizes analysis rather than mechanical work. The objective of this course is to develop a set of tools for in-depth financial statements analysis and valuation.

RSM4310HF – Foundations of Finance

This is a basic course in finance designed to provide the core skills necessary to complete more advanced work in finance and to provide the overall context of financial decision making. However, the pace is quick and those without much finance will find it difficult, but the material in this course is basic for understanding finance.

RSM4314HF – Risk Management and Financial Institutions

This course deals with the way companies, particularly financial institutions, manage risk. It covers credit risk, market risk, operational risk, and liquidity risk. The nature of bank regulation and the Basel capital requirements for banks are examined. Other topics include copulas, the calculation of economic capital, and RAROC.

RSM4315HF – Investment Banking and Corporate Valuation

This course will cover many aspects of investment banking – both from a financing perspective as well as mergers and acquisitions. The goal here is for you to understand many aspects of what is being done at an investment bank, including the products that are offered. On the corporate finance side there will be particular emphasis on how companies finance. We will go over the basics of why companies access public and private market as well as what the products are: debt, equity, preferreds and securitizations. We will also cover the mechanics of going public, bought deals, and how to price equity and debt issues. We will also cover on the M&A side; creating and distributing value, M&A valuation techniques, and bankruptcy issues.

RSM4317HS – Analysis of Fixed Income Markets

This course describes important fixed income securities and markets. It will provide an overview of traditional bond and term structure concepts as well as review a number of bond structures relevant to the different sectors of the fixed income market.

RSM4318HF – Applied Portfolio Management

The applied portfolio management course will look at topics in portfolio management that go beyond the null of efficient markets. Topics covered will vary but may include alternatives to mean variance optimization such as the growth optimal portfolio, the role of active versus passive management and the relevance of recent anomalies that go under the rubric of inefficient markets or behavioural finance. Assignments will be done in groups back testing various investment strategies. The emphasis is on the interface between current investment research and real world investment strategies.

RSM4319HS – Forecasting Risks and Opportunities for Financial Securities

Course objectives are: to develop skills for quantifying risks; to evaluate risk and return modeling for forecasting risks and the associated potential returns; to identify and quantify parameter and model risks; and to develop trading/investment strategies taking explicit account of these risks. We will use learning-by-doing exercises to achieve these objectives. The first part of the course emphasizes developing Excel applications linked to actual financial data. We then apply what we have learned using experiential learning cases on the Rotman Interactive Trader platform for which our Excel applications will be linked to data from a simulated market, that is, data generated by the class participants. These interactive cases are analogous to using a flight simulator to learn to fly except in our case we are learning how to make effective financial decisions taking account of uncertainty about the future.

RSM4322HS – Application of Derivative Products

This course explains how the derivatives business works. It starts by using equity derivative examples to explain how dealers manufacture the derivatives that they sell to their customers. It then moves on to explain credit and interest rate derivatives

RSM4323HF – Investments

This quantitative course presents advanced material relevant for portfolio mangaers. First, it examines key elements of portfolio management with an emphasis on risk factors and strategic asset allocation (although tactical asset allocation and strategies designed to exploit apparent violations of market efficiency, etc. will also be discussed). Second, this course discusses implementation and oversight of portfolio strategies, performance evaluation, and practical issues related to hiring and evaluating asset managers. Discussionof these topics will be oftern based on relevant pratical examples and case studies.


This page was last updated: 2020-08-26 @ 1:40 pm