This program is designed to provide senior technical managers with the financial concepts, strategies, and tools needed to deal more effectively with corporate financial management. Course curriculum focuses on basic financial principles for project evaluation, funding, and resource allocation, helping leaders to work more effectively with financial decision makers and apply the principles of finance to short-term and long-range goals.
Fundamentals of Finance for the Technical Executive
Certificate Track:
Management and Leadership
Location:
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Tuition:
$3,700 (excluding accommodations)
Program Days (for ACE Credit) 2
Today's technical executive must be able to use finance to persuade corporate financial officers to fund projects as well as use financial tools to address senior management's concerns about risk. Focused on basic principles of accounting and financial decision making for managers, this program will help transform a technical manager’s ability to manage and advocate for both day-to-day and long-term activities.
This interactive, hands-on program will enable participants to:
This program is designed for executives who manage project teams and departments, and technical professionals involved with R&D, product and software design, engineering, and other scientific and technical work. No advanced quantitative skills are required, but participants should bring calculators.
Past participants have included key members of technical management, such as:
Paul Mende is a Senior Lecturer in the Finance Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Mende co-founded, co-owned, and served as director of research from 2002 to 2010 for Fort Hill Capital Management, LLC, a hedge fund specializing in equity derivatives and dedicated to quantitative research, trading, and risk management. Fort Hill actively participated in the launch and success of Bay Hill Fund LP and Bay Hill Capital Management LLC in 2007 as a multi-strategy volatility hedge fund. In 2004, Fort Hill launched Absolute Strategies Fund and Absolute Investment Advisers LLC as an innovative absolute-return fund-of-funds structured as a Securities and Exchange Commission registered mutual fund, with daily liquidity for investors and full position-level transparency from managers.
Mende previously held positions as director of the Money Management & Trading Group at Cambridge Technology Partners, Inc., and as an analyst in the Quantitative Strategies Group at MDT Advisers, Inc. He also held positions as an assistant professor of physics at Brown University and as a research associate at the Center for Theoretical Physics and the Department of Mathematics at MIT.
Mende holds an AB in physics from Harvard University and a PhD in physics from Princeton University.
David Thesmar is a Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
He is an expert in corporate finance, financial intermediation, entrepreneurship, and behavioral economics. Recently, he has studied the impact of financing constraints on the real economy. Thesmar also investigates risk management and systemic risk in banking. He has also researched firm organization and non-rational decision making on corporate strategies. His work makes systematic use of large datasets but emphasizes a parsimonious modelling approach to address economic questions.
A native of France, Thesmar has been involved in policy advising both at the French and European level. He was a member of the council of economic advisors to the French prime minister from 2007 to 2013, and is currently a scientific adviser to the European Systemic Risk Board. An active participant in the public debate, Thesmar is the author of several books, and a regular columnist for the French daily newspaper Les Echos. He has also held numerous consulting positions in the private sector, with a focus on big data related topics.
Thesmar hold a BA in Physics and Economics from École Polytechnique, and a PhD from Paris School of Economics.
Current Research Focus: Thesmar’s research focuses on banking, asset management, behavioral economics, and the determinants of firm and industry productivity. Recently, he has studied the European interbank market during the past financial crises. He also works on quantifying the effects of financing constraints on investment and aggregate productivity.
Adrien Verdelhan is the Class of 1956 Career Development Professor and an Associate Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
His research focuses on measures of systematic risk in financial markets, particularly in currency and sovereign bond markets. Verdelhan’s work in international finance shows when and why exchange rates are risky, thus shedding light on the most well-known and puzzling currency trading strategy: the carry trade. His recent work focuses on arbitrage opportunities and the role of banking regulation. His research has been published notably in the American Economic Review, The Journal of Finance, and The Review of Financial Studies.
He is currently a Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was elected Teacher of the Year in 2011 and in 2018 by MIT Sloan students and received the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2016.
He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.
Current Research Focus: Verdelhan's research focus is international finance. Current projects include the arbitrage opportunities in currency markets and the role of banking regulation, the measure of the share of systematic risk in bilateral exchange rates at high and low frequencies, the link between exchange rates and returns on long-term bonds, and the optimal size of international capital flows in a world with time-varying aggregate risk, as well as the quantity and price of currency risk in international equity markets.
Sample Schedule—Subject to Change
| DAY 1 SAMPLE | |
| 07:45AM - 08:30AM | Registration and Continental Breakfast |
| 08:30AM - 12:30PM | Basic Concepts of Finance, Case Study of Wilson Lumber and In-Class Group Work |
| 12:30PM - 01:30PM | Networking Lunch |
| 01:30PM - 05:30PM | Introduction to Project Evaluation, Investment Evaluation Exercise |
| 05:30PM - 06:30PM | Reception |
| DAY 2 SAMPLE | |
| 07:45AM - 08:30AM | Continental Breakfast |
| 08:30AM - 12:30PM | More on Project Evaluation |
| 12:30PM - 01:30PM | Networking Lunch |
| 01:30PM - 04:30PM | Project Evaluation, Case Study and In-Class Group Work |
Understanding the value of a loose tooth, a stuffed eagle, and Whole Foods: An interview with Paul Mende.
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VIEWThe ongoing debate on the financial scandal involving the Saradha group in West Bengal has put the focus on chit funds, one of the oldest but still poorly understood financial institutions in India.
Seeking financial advice is bad for your wealth. New research by top academics concludes that the advisor industry mostly reinforces bad behavior, rather than fixing it, even when clients start with a well-diversified, low-fee portfolio. High fees and commissions incentivize advisors to promote performance chasing and costly actively-managed products.
VIEWThe study, by Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan, Markus Noeth of the University of Hamburg and Antoinette Schoar of the MIT Sloan School of Management, looks at the behavior of typical investment advisers available to the general public through their banks, independent brokerages or investment advisory firms (focusing on the market for those with less than $500,000 to invest).
VIEWMarleine Z: It was a phenomenal MIT experience. Learning and reviewing financial valuation concepts with hands-on professors/presenters, amongst a good combination of professional attendees, bringing in their experience and know-how to the table, and contributing to a nice networking experience.
Matthew R: Because a lot of the calculations where new to me, I would have benefitted from having a more complete solution for each exercise. I felt that often the solutions to multi-step problems were presented with the assumption that early steps were easy to solve for.
Tabratas Tharom I: Highly recommended either for those with background or without finance background cause the case study is unique and the hands-on calculation is really commendable.
Eduardo S: Excellent review of the "highlights" of corporate finance. As someone with no previous background in it, I came away with a good understanding of accrual vs. cash accounting and the tools to use in both, as well as a "how-to" in value proposition.
Thomas R: Great course and appreciated the lecturers. I found it was a little shallow on the S/W industry side, which would have been valuable to myself. Concepts were solid and got me thinking on many levels. Great course overall.
Cynthia Y: Being one of those people who glaze over when people start throwing out numbers or financial terms, I really appreciated Paul Mende's style of teaching. He actually made leaning about Finance fun! I left with some practical information I can use immediately. Note that the amount of pre-work was considerable as compared to other classes and was very dry. There is also a portion of the class taught by another lecturer that was also very dry.
Nasim G: I thoroughly enjoyed this course. The topics were very appropriate for non-financial executives and the case studies brought the discussed concepts to operational context. Both professors were extremely knowledgeable and seasoned in the field of finance, and were able to effectively cover the discussion topics and keep the class engaged. I highly recommend this class for operations and technical managers and executives.
Raghavendra M: This is an exceptional real-world case study based learning experience in corporate finance. The teaching staff bring in a combination of rich industry experience and deep academic background. Experienced and engaging participants further enhance the learning experience. It has empowered me to measure and effectively communicate value proposition of projects and business ideas.
Fabio De M: Practical and enlightening course in Financial Management! Powerful teaching through story telling and real world cases!
Rahul K: Great class , cases were interesting and well connected to the content that was presented. Faculty was MIT-class , outstanding.
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"This was an excellent investment! As an Account Executive, I often work within complex sales cycles that involve a lot of financial scrutiny. The course gave me a perspective from the other side of the table. I now have a better understanding of common challenges as well as the language spoken by the financial teams." -Bradley M.
"In the financial world, something is worth what people are willing to pay for it—fair market value. But the way you base forward-looking decisions for running a business is tied to neither fair market or historical accounting basis. Value is central to finance, but there isn’t a single definition of it. So, it’s not a fight of which is right—each is just used in a different way.” - Paul Mende
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