Most business decisions of investors, managers, analysts, consultants and entrepreneurs require you to assess the future. You will learn a different approach to make better decisions using the fundamentals of businesses. Students who have taken this course often comment on how it transforms their thinking and analysis. It also is a useful “capstone” to the MBA core.

We consider both a startup and public companies and learn how to use both financial reports and supplementary information sources to understand the business to be able to make better forecasts and decisions.

We will cover some topics/concepts that are in financial statement analysis, earnings quality, security analysis and valuation classes. But I have never received feedback that the coverage in this course is redundant irrespective of other courses taken. We will focus on understanding how businesses create/destroy value and how to change this, and discuss if this is in the price or not.

You draw on > 30 years of my experience: advising and analyzing companies, creating a new framework for analysis and investment, as part of senior management at Morgan Stanley, as an angel investor, a board member, an academic researcher, auditor and participant in accounting regulation. My objective is to pass on as much of this knowledge to you as possible.

Shivaram Rajgopal

Roy Bernard Kester and T.W. Byrnes Professor of Accounting and Auditing; Accounting Division Chair

Shiva Rajgopal is the Kester and Byrnes Professor of Accounting and Auditing at Columbia Business School. He has also been a faculty member at the Duke University, Emory University and the University of Washington. Professor Rajgopal’s research interests span financial reporting, earnings quality, fraud, executive compensation and corporate culture.  His research is frequently cited in the popular press, including...

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