ACCT6110 - Financial Accounting (Course Syllabus)
The objective of this course is to provide an understanding of financial accounting fundamentals for prospective consumers of corporate financial information, such as managers, stockholders, financial analysts, and creditors. The course focuses on understanding how economic events like corporate investments, financing transactions and operating activities are recorded in the three main financial statements (i.e., the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows). Along the way, students will develop the technical skills needed to analyze corporate financial statements and disclosures for use in financial analysis, and to interpret how accounting standards and managerial incentives affect the financial reporting process. This course is recommended for students who want a more in-depth overview of the financial accounting required for understanding firm performance and potential future risks through analysis of reported financial information, such as students intending to go into security analysis and investment banking.
ACCT6130 - Fin and Mngl Acct (Course Syllabus)
This course provides an introduction to both financial and managerial accounting, and emphasizes the analysis and evaluation of accounting information as part of the managerial processes of planning, decision-making, and control. A large aspect of the course covers the fundamentals of financial accounting. The objective is to provide a basic overview of financial accounting, including basic accounting concepts and principles, as well as the structure of the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows. The course also introduces elements of managerial accounting and emphasizes the development and use of accounting information for internal decisions. Topics include cost behavior and analysis, product and service costing, and relevant costs for internal decision-making. This course is recommended for students who will be using accounting information for managing manufacturing and service operations, controlling costs, and making strategic decisions, as well as those going into general consulting or thinking of starting their own businesses.
ACCT7060 - Cost Management (Course Syllabus)
This course focuses on ways to improve cost efficiency without compromising quality or growth. Whether an organization is seeking to make immediate cost cuts, better position the business for future growth, or both, it needs the right mix of intelligent cost optimization measures tailored to its unique business needs. This strategic approach to cost management goes beyond cost cutting and instead emphasizes new value creation and continuous cost improvement. This course covers the key factors and methods involved in choosing and analyzing cost structures, and the cost management practices that can be strategically applied across the various functions of a business organization to analyze and forecast costs and to improve organizational performance. The course emphasizes the methods available to measure and evaluate costs for planning, forecasting, and decision-making. The material is designed for managers and consultants who will be involved in implementing cost management activities, as well as analysts, investors, and strategic planners involved in competitive cost analysis and financial forecasting.
Prerequisites: ACCT 6110 OR ACCT 6130
ACCT7420 - Fin Report & Bus Analys (Course Syllabus)
This intensive one-semester course focuses on how to extract and interpret information in financial statements. The course adopts a user perspective of accounting by illustrating several specific accounting issues in a decision context.
Prerequisites: ACCT 6110 OR ACCT 6130
ACCT7430 - Acct For Complx Fin Stru (Course Syllabus)
This class studies how complex financial structures account for their activities. Primary emphasis is on the application of purchase accounting for mergers and acquisitions, the equity method for investments, and preparing and interpreting consolidated financial statements. Other topics covered include translations and remeasurements for nondomestic investments, and earnings per share calculations for complex financial structures. Tax considerations and acquisition strategies are of only peripheral interest in this class, and students who are concerned primarily with those topics are advised to seek a different elective.
Prerequisites: ACCT 6110 OR ACCT 6130
ACCT7470 - Fin Disclosure Analytics (Course Syllabus)
This course focuses on the analysis of financial communications between corporate managers and outsiders, including the required financial statements, voluntary disclosures, and interactions with investors, analysts, and the media. The course draws on the findings of recent academic research to discuss a number of techniques that outsiders can use to detect potential bias or aggressiveness in financial reporting. FORMAT: Case discussions and lectures. Comprehensive final exam, group project, case write-ups, and class participation.
Prerequisites: ACCT 6110 OR ACCT 6130
ACCT7471 - Fin Disclosure Analytics (Course Syllabus)
This course focuses on the analysis of financial communications between corporate managers and outsiders, including the required financial statements, voluntary disclosures, and interactions with investors, analysts, and the media. The course draws on the findings of recent academic research to discuss a number of techniques that outsiders can use to detect potential bias or aggressiveness in financial reporting. FORMAT: Case discussions and lectures. Comprehensive final exam, group project, case write-ups, and class participation. This course is for Wharton Executive MBA students only.
ACCT7640 - Climate and Financial Markets (Course Syllabus)
Climate change might be the defining challenge of our times, with a wide range of effects on financial markets and the broader economy. At the same time, financial markets play an important role in financing the transition to a net-zero economy. This role, however, is shaped by the information that is available to market participants. In this course, we examine how climate risks—both physical and regulatory—affect firms, financial markets (including carbon and renewable-energy certificate markets), and markets for energy and real estate. We examine the role that firms’ disclosures and third-party information sources play. As climate change is high on the agenda of almost every company and government, this course will be valuable both for students with the ambition to pursue a career centered around sustainability and those who want to gain a better understanding of how climate issues affect more traditional roles in the financial sector, consulting, or non-profits. The starting point for this course is that financial market participants increasingly realize that climate change represents an important investment risk. One central concern focuses on transition risks, and in particular on the effects that regulatory responses to climate change have on the business models of carbon-intensive energy companies. We discuss how concerns about various climate risks influence the way investors allocate their capital and exercise their oversight of firms. We start with the price impacts of climate risks in equity, debt and real estate markets, including the role played by shareholder activism and engagement, divestment and portfolio alignment. Next, we study carbon markets with a focus on pricing and discuss strategies to hedge climate risks through financial instruments such as carbon or renewable-energy credits and derivative contracts. We then explore how different firms in the global energy sector—ranging from oil & gas to renewable energy to electric utilities—have responded to climate-related pressures from their investors and other stakeholders. Because outsiders’ reactions depend on the information that they have, we investigate the impact of ESG reporting on financial markets and on the choices that managers make. Here, we also discuss the costs and benefits of regulating ESG reporting and the impact of greenwashing. We pay special attention to the impact of climate risk and reporting on decisions inside organizations, such as spin-offs, hedging, catastrophe insurance, and the structure of executive-compensation contracts. Further topics include life-cycle emissions and the social cost of carbon.
Prerequisites: (ACCT 6110 OR ACCT 6130) AND MGEC 6110 AND MGEC 6120
ACCT7900 - Accounting for Entrepreneurs (Course Syllabus)
This course covers the financial, managerial, and tax accounting issues and tools relevant to private, entrepreneurial companies as they progress from the earliest stages of the business through to the company’s exit, typically through a strategic buyer, a private equity firm, or via an IPO. Topics include the choice of organizational form; the development of the initial accounting infrastructure; the accounting issues that are frequently faced by entrepreneurs such as accounting for intangible assets, employee compensation, revenue recognition, and financing; the development of management and internal control systems; the establishment of monthly and yearly budgeting, financial forecasting, and cash management processes; and the accounting information required for fundraising and going public. The class is designed for students who intend to own, work for, or invest in entrepreneurial companies.
ACCT8970 - Taxes and Bus Strategy (Course Syllabus)
The objective of this course is to develop a framework for understanding how taxes affect business decisions. Traditional finance and strategy courses do not consider the role of taxes. Similarly, traditional tax courses often ignore the richness of the decision context in which tax factors operate. The key themes of the framework - all parties, all taxes and all costs - are applied to decision contexts such as investments, compensation, organizational form, regulated industries, financial instruments, tax-sheltered investments, mergers and acquisitions, multinational, and multistate. The ultimate goal is to provide a new approach to thinking about taxes (and all forms of government intervention) that will be valuable even as laws and governments change.
Prerequisites: (ACCT 6110 OR ACCT 6130) AND FNCE 6110