Accounting and Finance MSc drafted

Program Overview

The Master's program in Finance at the University of Birmingham is designed to provide a comprehensive foundation in financial principles and techniques. Core modules cover key areas such as corporate finance, financial reporting, and corporate governance. Students can select optional modules to specialize in areas like strategic management, international finance, or new venture creation. The program offers various final project options, including research and consultancy routes, to cater to diverse career aspirations.

Program Outline

Outline:

Core modules:

• Principles of Finance: Introduces financial decision-making theory and practice, covering time value of money, risk and return, and capital budgeting.
• Management Accounting: Provides an understanding of management accounting issues and methodologies, focusing on its role in decision-making, planning, control, and performance management.
• Financial Reporting and Company Performance: Develops skills in understanding, interpreting, and analyzing financial statements, with an emphasis on critical assessment and interpretation of corporate financial performance.
• Corporate Finance: Introduces advanced topics in corporate finance, providing a critical understanding of theories and their practical implications in financial decision-making.
• Corporate Governance: Provides a thorough grounding in advanced topics in corporate governance, including concepts, principles, theories, models, systems, mechanisms, reforms, regulations, and research.
• Contemporary Issues in Accounting and CSR: Examines important contemporary issues and topics in accounting and corporate social responsibility, enhancing appreciation and understanding of ethical, regulatory, and governing accounting issues.
• The Global Professional: Fosters transferable skills fundamental to global employability, including cultural awareness, adaptability, and intercultural effectiveness.

Optional modules (select 7):

• Strategic Management: Provides an introduction to strategic management theories and their practical application, covering mission and goal formation, stakeholder theories, corporate governance, business ethics, external and internal analysis, corporate and business level strategies, strategic decision-making, and strategy implementation and evaluation.
• The Circular Economy and Responsible Resource Management: Explores the challenges of responsible resource management through circular economic thinking and solutions, considering debates about the adoption of circular economic principles.
• International Finance: Provides tools for understanding global financial markets and the challenges and opportunities they bring to financial managers of multinational corporations.
• Reward Management: Develops skills in analyzing reward management practices in organizations, considering how to strategically use reward as a mechanism for improving productivity and engagement.
• Humanitarian Challenges: Explores humanitarian problems raised by challenges such as migration, chemical weapons, desertification, global inequality, and development issues, drawing on scholarship in law, geography, and economics.
• New Venture Creation: Encourages entrepreneurial mindset development and understanding of the challenges and opportunities of starting and running a new venture, providing tools and techniques for assessing entrepreneurial readiness and preparing for the risky environment of creating new ventures.

Final Project:

• Research Route: Quantitative Financial Analysis: Provides a strong foundation in statistical and econometric techniques used in the financial industry.
• Research Route: Individual Research Project: Allows pursuit of personal interests or passions through an in-depth research project using relevant research methods.
• Consultancy Route: Consultancy Skills: Prepares for the Group Consultancy Project, introducing the theory underpinning the process of consultancy in organizations.
• Consultancy Route: Group Consultancy Project: Provides an opportunity to engage in a 'real world' live client brief, working in small teams to scope the project, gather information, analyze data, and make recommendations to the client.
• New Venture Creation Route: Launch a Venture: Provides practical steps to initiate a new venture or facilitate growth and innovation in an existing venture, focusing on developing business practicalities through action, reflection, and case study.
• New Venture Creation Route: New Venture Creation: Encourages entrepreneurial mindset development and understanding of the challenges and opportunities of starting and running a new venture, providing tools and techniques for assessing entrepreneurial readiness and preparing for the risky environment of creating new ventures.

Teaching:

• Triple proof of teaching excellence: Staff rank in the top three in England for doctorates, higher degrees, and teaching qualifications.
• First in the country for National Teaching Fellowships, marking the UK's best lecturers in Higher Education, with 22 awards since 2008.
• Winner of the first Global Teaching Excellence Award, recognizing the University's commitment to world-class teaching and success in developing students as independent learners and critical thinkers.

Careers:

• Financial Advisor
• Economist
• Accountant
• Tax Advisor
• Forensic Accountant
• Investment Analyst
• Stockbroker
• Risk Manager
• PhD programs in Business and Management Studies and Economics and Econometrics

Other:

• Intensive induction pre-course workshop provides in-depth course insight, promotes interactive environment, and facilitates tutor meetings.
• Tutors are experts in their field with practical industry experience, combining academic knowledge with practical application.
• Many aspects of teaching and assessment are grounded in real-life situations.

In 2024/25 the full-time tuition fee for UK postgraduate students on this course will be £8,900 (Band 3). Tuition fees for UK students will cover the cost of your study at the University.