BRADLEY UNIVERSITY
FOSTER COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Fin 522, Introduction to Finance	Dr. Arlyn R. Rubash
Spring Semester, 2016	224 Baker Hall
arr@bradley.edu	1(309) 677-2258

CATALOG DESCRIPTION: Principles of financial management: financial systems and flow of funds; time value of money and its application; raising and allocation of funds; financial analysis, planning, and forecasting. Cannot be used to satisfy MBA elective or concentration requirements.

COURSE STRUCTURE: This course is delivered entirely at distance. It provides students with convenient, flexible and rapid access to an MBA program prerequisite. Considerable material is covered requiring lots of independent hard work.To avoid conflicts, you may work ahead. If you want to have class meetings with live discussion and a more relaxed pace you should enroll for finance 322. It satisfies the same prerequisite and has regular class meetings over the entire semester.

PREREQUISITES: ATG 505; ECO 506, QM 502. Students should have a good calculator and ready access to an Internet connected micro computer and be well acquainted with using the Internet.

COURSE OBJECTIVE: Introduction to Finance provides students with the fundamentals of finance for business operations. Theories and applications are examined to introduce the current thinking and research in the field. The origin and present understanding of return and risk are emphasized. The full assortment of finance topics that managers must know is covered.

LEARNING OUTCOMES: Upon Successful Completion of this course, the student will be able to:

1. Understand the primary functions of financial management
   
2. Interpret the meaning of financial statements including the income statement, balance sheet, statement of retained earnings and cash flow statement.
   
3. Understand and employ the time value of money and discounted cash flow analysis techniques.
   
4. Identify and analyze relevant cash flows for capital budgeting
   
5. Evaluate capital budgeting projects using the payback, net present value, internal rate of return, and modified internal rate of return
   
6. Understand the firm's capital structure, and calculate weighted average and marginal cost of capital.
   
7. Identify the sources of capital and ways to find an optimal mix of funding sources
   
8. Evaluate dividend policy and the effect dividend policy has on the firm
   
9. Understand the characteristics of working capital and the management of cash, marketable securities, inventory, payables and their roles
   

TEXT: Fundamentals of Financial Management   by Brigham and Houston, (Concise Eighth edition). South-Western, a division of Thomas Learning(2015) The second required reading is documentation for EDGAR. How do I use EDGAR? tutorial and Researching public companies through EDGAR.

INTERNET: You must use a workable browser to take all exams in this course. Firefox browser is proven to work. If you do not have Firefox, you may obtain it here. Contact the help desk if you need help installing Firefox.

CLASS TIME: At the student's convenience

EXAMS: Take each exam sequentially before its due date as shown below. To insure you do not have computer problems that prevent you from completing an exam on time, plan to complete each exam as early as possible, well before its due date. Each exam is due at midnight on the date listed below in the assignment schedule. You must notify the instructor immediately by e-mail if an access problem occurs so that the exam can be reset. There is a one day grace period following each Lesson exam's due date. If problems of any type prevent you from completing an exam before the grace period ends you must take the makeup exam. If you are dissatisfied with your grade on an exam taken before its due date, you may review your results on the due date, and if you wish retake that exam that day. Note, if you do retake any exam the score earned the second time WILL replace the previous score, so be certain that you can improve before any retake.

MAKEUP EXAMS: If you miss the due date for any exam, for example due to illness or a computer failure, you will have a one day grace period following the due date to resolve this problem. If you experience any problems whatsoever when taking an exam during the grace period, regardless of why you are taking it then, the only possible resolution is to take a makeup exam. After the grace period you can replace a missed or faulty exam only with a makeup exam. You may take a makeup exam ONLY if you did not complete a topic's regularly scheduled exam. If a makeup and regularly scheduled exam are both taken for any chapter, only the lower score will be counted. Note that makeup exams may be more difficult than regular exams and the maximus possible score is 90% of the replaced exam's points.

RESEARCHING PUBLIC COMPANIES: An important dimension of finance is being aware of contemporary information and being adept at quickly finding it. A research project based largely on information available in the electronic data gathered for retrieval addresses this course component. Some of this contemporary information is also or alternately available through other Internet sources, but EDGAR content defines the correct answer when discrepancies occur. You must be able to access EDGAR online including its various tutorial components.Once you are familiar with using EDGAR, select a company, get it approved, and analyze it using the various tools covered in this course.

CALCULATOR POLICY: You are expected to understand and be able to calculate all the mathematical equations used in this course. I discourage the purchase of expensive and elaborate hand calculators as they often confuse rather then benefit students. A TI BAII or a BAII + Professional is the recommended choice. You will find instructions for using them here. Do all calculations according to their appropriate equations and use the calculator functions only to check your work. Otherwise you may be getting wrong answers and have no idea of what error is being committed.

OFFICE HOURS: The professor will employ asynchronous communication primarily through e-mail to maintain regular contact with students. If you need to talk directly, come to 224 Baker Hall on Tuesdays or Thursdays between 2:45-4:00. Times for online office hours are Mondays from 3:00-3:30. Access them with zoom.us/join and enter the 9 digit code available in Sakai.

GRADE DETERMINATION: The final course grade earned will be determined by a series of chapter exams worth 400 points, a comprehensive final exam worth 400 points, and an analysis of a selected company's contemporary situation worth 200 points. The standard breakdown of the 1,000 points as shown below will be used in determining final grades

ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

ASSIGNMENT SCHEDULE for FIN 522
Due Date	Day	Chapter Exam	Topic to be Covered	Recommended Questions & Problems Answers are in Appendix B
3/24	Thursday		Introduction (9:00pm online with zoom.us)
3/28	Monday	0	Practice exam
3/30	Wednesday Lesson 1	1	Overview of Financial Management	1,4,7,9
		2	Financial Markets and Institutions	1-8
4/1	Friday		Get approval of selected company to analyze
4/4	Monday Lesson 2	3	Financial Statements, Cash Flow, and Taxes	1-11
		4	Analysis of Financial Statements	1-23
4/7	Thursday Lesson 3	5	Time Value of Money	1-3,5-9,22-26
		6	Interest rates	1-16
4/12	Tuesday Lesson 4	7	Bonds and their Valuation	1-10,14
		8	Risk and Rates of Return	1-5,7-10,12,15-18,20
4/15	Friday Lesson 5	9	Stocks and their Valuation	1-5,7-9,13,15,17
		10	The Cost of Capital	1-5,7-9,18-20
4/19	Tuesday Lesson 6	11	Basics of Capital Budgeting	1-13,17,19,23
		12	Cash Flow Estimation and Risk Analysis	1-8,10,11
4/25	Monday Lesson 7	13	Capital Structure and Leverage	1-4,8,9,12
		14	Distributions to Shareholders: Dividends and Share Repurchases	1-3,5-7,10
4/29	Friday		Company analysis due
5/2	Monday Lesson 8	15	Working Capital Management	1-6,9,12,16
		17	Multinational Financial Management	1-6,8,11,14-17
5/3	Tuesday		Makeup exams due
5/5	Thursday		Final exam becomes available
5/10	Tuesday		Comprehensive final exam due

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