Columbia Business School

Overview

In five days of hands-on, interactive sessions, Finance and Accounting for the Nonfinancial Executive provides you with a unique opportunity to deepen your expertise of finance and accounting for better management and decision-making capabilities.

The program features sessions on the role of accounting, key concepts of managerial and financial accounting, ratio calculation, and analysis of your company and shareholder value management.

A hallmark of this program that is unmatched in other Executive Education programs is the Corporate Financial Analysis, a hands-on detailed financial analysis of your company, or a company of your choosing with the help of faculty coaches. The analysis results in a customized financial profile that summarizes how the specific business is doing. Faculty coaches help you read this profile on different levels, discuss the importance of each number for your business and be able to tell how your business is doing based on the figures, assessing strengths and areas for improvements.

At the end of the program, you will have mastered key finance and accounting concepts and understand the relationships among profitability, cash flow, liquidity and growth, and identify the red flags in financial statements -- highly important in the current volatile financial context.

For a complete program schedule download the agenda.

Please Contact Us

Please contact our Learning Solutions Specialists at 212-854-3395 for a personal conversation to learn more.

Audience

Finance and Accounting for the Nonfinancial Executive is designed for midlevel to senior-level executives with five or more years of experience in corporate or divisional roles who seek a deeper understanding of finance and accounting.

The program is well suited for those in creative or technical fields and can also serve as a refresher for executives with some knowledge of finance and accounting.

Alumni and up to four of their colleagues are eligible for a 25 percent tuition benefit for programs lasting up to seven days. More on the Alumni Tuition Benefit.

Benefits

Finance and Accounting for the Nonfinancial Executive blends broad financial principles with practical applications.

How You Will Benefit in the Current Context

Participants report appreciating the thoroughness of the program: rigorous, but rewarding. The personal attention participants receive from faculty brings concepts into clearer focus more readily and helps participants quickly gain confidence in their new finance and accounting skills.

Summary of Benefits

• Understand accounting's role in business and master the language of accounting
• Learn and apply key concepts of managerial and financial accounting
• Calculate ratios and develop a sound ratio analysis
• Receive faculty coaching on your Corporate Financial Analysis
• Apply finance and accounting concepts to shareholder value management
• Identify red flags in financial statements

Upon completion of this program, you will earn five days towards a Certificate in Business Excellence. Learn more.

Faculty

	Doron Nissim Ernst & Young Professor of Accounting & Finance
	Sharon Katz Assistant Professor of Accounting
	Amir Ziv Professor of Accounting Vice Dean and Samberg Faculty Director

Faculty Coaches for Corporate Financial Analysis

Dan Amiram

Edwige Cheynel

Fabrizio Ferri

Alon Kalay

Urooj Khan

Gil Sadka

Suresh Nallareddy

Julian Yeo

Curriculum

Topics include:

Day One

Articulating Principles of Accounting Building Blocks
Balance sheet
Income statement
Statement of cash flows
Income measurement: Cash flows versus earnings

Applying Accounting Principles
Revenue recognition
Matching
Conservatism
Manipulations and red flags

Day Two

Using Accounting Information to Make Better Decisions
Integrating financial and managerial accounting
Identifying profit opportunities with activity-based costing (ABC)
Understanding the balanced scorecard and efficient budgeting
Mastering net present value (NPV) calculations

Day Three

Understanding How to Analyze a Business
Review actual financial statements
Reformulate the financial statements to facilitate informative profitability analysis
Develop a systematic ratio analysis to evaluate profitability

Hands-On Application: Corporate Financial Analysis
Review the financial statements of a company of your choosing, analyze its profitability, and discuss the analysis in small groups

Day Four

Determining What Makes a Business Valuable
Develop a systematic ratio analysis to evaluate earnings quality, growth prospects, risk, and market pricing
Describe and demonstrate the application of fundamental and relative (price-multiple) valuation methods
Learn the role of valuation in mergers and acquisitions (M&A)

Hands-On Application: Corporate Financial Analysis
Applying the comprehensive ratio framework and valuation methods to analyze a company of your choosing, and discuss the analysis in small groups 

Day Five

Financial Statement Analysis and Valuation
Evaluate the firm's strategy
Understand its accounting choices
Analyze its current performance
Forecast its future performance
Estimate its fundamental value

Real-World Experience in Real Time
Examining effective financial management in the real world
Talking to finance professionals

Special Features

Corporate Financial Analysis: A unique element of the program is the Corporate Financial Analysis: a customized financial analysis of your own company or company of your choosing. A Columbia Business School faculty member studies the company, then coaches you and a small group of participants in similar industries and companies through the process of analyzing the firm. For the Corporate Financial Analysis, you may use your own company's annual report, or the annual report of a competitor or a supplier—it is up to you. Not only do participants receive personal attention on their specific situations, but they also feel that this is where many of the concepts that they've studied come together because they are learning by doing.

Field Experience in New York City:As a unique part of each program, participants meet and interact with professionals working in the financial industry. Together, participants and finance experts examine effective financial strategies relevant to their business. Pertinent real-world examples of finance and accounting techniques are presented and discussed as they are being implemented in the field every day.

Last year, Tracey Travis, senior vice president of finance and chief financial officer of Polo Ralph Lauren, and Robert Herz, the former chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, provided real-world insights for participants. Davis focused on how she uses principles of sound financial management to help the business achieve its strategic goals. Herz discussed the challenges that our economy is facing in terms of financial and environmental sustainability and how we should expect both financial reporting and other corporate reporting to change and evolve given these major economic trends.

Previous guests have included Mark Gallogly, the co-founder of Centerbridge, and John Martin, the chief financial officer of Time Warner.