Finance
WHAT IS FINANCE? Finance is the lifeblood of business. Without knowledge of the financial implications of business decisions, managers can make serious mistakes. Proper financial analysis, however, will help business leaders make the proper choices that in turn add value for the firm’s stakeholders, reflect the preferences of consumers, and facilitate economic growth and prosperity as innovative products and services receive the proper level of support from investors. From an academic standpoint, finance sits at the intersection of many business disciplines: using economic analysis of accounting statements, financial researchers and managers discern and enact proper corporate strategies, including how to make better decisions about everything from marketing activities to hiring decisions to information technology implementation. The CNU business program undergoes a continuous improvement process, such that each class is examined in depth on a regular basis to ensure that the topics covered are relevant, and that they are covered in sufficient depth. The curriculum was recently modified, for example, to allow for electives, study abroad opportunities, and internships. The recent global financial crisis affected almost everyone on earth, from sub-prime homeowners in Miami to municipal investment funds in Norway. Finance majors learn about the supply of and demand for investment capital, and how market actors can sometimes behave irrationally. Our classes address issues such as how repeated boom-and-bust cycles occur, what their implications are for financial managers, and how financial markets affect every other sector of the economy. As a finance major, you will learn about how individuals can profit even when the overall market is failing, and how investors (and companies) can protect themselves against risk using hedging strategies and derivatives. Finance majors at CNU take a sequence of classes that culminates in a writing-intensive, quantitative research course, where each student will make buy/sell recommendations for companies in a particular industry. Recent student papers examined the following industries and topics: The professors that teach finance in the Luter School have both academic credentials as well as real-world financial experience helping companies go public, assess risks, and design corporate strategies. We bring into the classroom insights gained from solving actual problems that confront firms, including small entrepreneurial companies as well as established, publicly-traded multinationals. CNU finance professors are some of the most prolific at the Luter School in terms of scholarly publications. These publications include the International Finance Review, Business Valuation Review, International Journal of Economic Research, Review of Business, and OECD Proceedings. Our professors have recently been invited to present papers at the Yale School of Management, the Financial Services Institute annual conference (New York), Bocconi University (Milan), French Finance Association annual meetings (Paris), and the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts (Las Vegas). With proper planning, a student can double major in finance and another business discipline (accounting, economics, management or marketing)—without taking summer classes or overloading classes during a semester. Financial services firms often pay higher salaries than elsewhere, so whatever your passion, bundling it up with a finance double major could yield substantial benefits over the course of your career. CNU boasts impressive facilities, and this is also the case for the finance major. The university will soon be breaking ground on a state-of-the-art business school structure, which will include a trading room where students will have access to the type of data that Wall Street analysts use to make investment decisions. In addition, CNU finance students have benefitted from our relationships with the local business community. This has led not only to many internships and job offers, but to special opportunities such as a trip abroad led by a CNU professor to the financial center of London; students toured the London Stock Exchange and met high-level personnel of global corporations as well as management consultants and investment bankers focusing on corporate restructuring in Europe. Finance graduates earn incomes that consistently rank among the highest of all university majors. A finance degree offers a lot of flexibility in terms of both immediate employment opportunities and graduate programs. Because finance majors are exposed to intensive quantitative training paired with real-world business skills, many employers seek them out. Finance majors also bring useful skills to nonprofit organizations and charities, and are often great fund-raisers that help further social causes for the greater good.
