Finance For Non-financial Leaders

Learn to use numbers to your advantage and begin building strong financial foundations that will help you secure your future.

This course aims to provide participants with a solid understanding of the basic concepts of corporate financing, corporate restructuring, and the role of ESG elements in corporate finance decisions and their outcomes.

Alongside peers from all industries and backgrounds, you will become familiar with key terminology in corporate finance management and strengthen your ability to make financially sound decisions for your organisation.

Designed to help you build your confidence and competence, Finance for Non-Financial Leaders will give you the tools you need to find your voice in discussions on corporate finance matters, and make numbers work for you.

Course Topics:

• Whether you are a small business owner, entrepreneur, or general manager of a small, medium or large organisation, understanding the core financial activities within your workplace can increase stability and improve decision-making processes for those in non-financial positions.
• This four-day course will provide you with the unique opportunity to master key corporate finance management concepts, understand the drivers and criteria of good investment decisions, and gain the skills and frameworks needed to negotiate effectively in uncertain and ever-changing business environments.
• Day one: 
• An introduction to discounting cash flows and how to calculate them
• Understand best practices in investment appraisal
• Explore the Net Present Value investment criterion and alternative investment criteria
• Analyse the reasons managers may make suboptimal investment decisions
• Day two:  
• An examination of stocks versus bonds
• Study the Miller-Modigliani theory on capital structure irrelevance
• Learn about the trade-off theory, pecking order theory and market timing theory in relation to capital structure
• Explore capital structure decisions and their shareholder value effects in practice, and how much debt your company should have
• Day three:  
• Examine key corporate finance theories relating to mergers and acquisitions
• Discover how to make corporate restructuring decisions that are aligned with your organisation’s vision, mission, and strategy
• Explore alternative forms of corporate restructuring including divestitures, spin-offs, strategic alliances, and joint ventures, and their effects on shareholder value
• Day four:  
• Analyse the relation between environment, social and governance (ESG) factors and shareholder value, and how to measure ESG activity
• Delve into the empirical evidence of ESG factors’ impact on corporate finance decisions and the outcomes of these decisions
• Take part in team presentations combining your learnings from the course

How You Learn:

• Delivered face-to-face over four days at Alliance Manchester Business School’s Executive Education centre, this hands-on and interactive course will heighten your understanding of finance for better decision-making and leadership capabilities.
• Each day of the course will involve a blend of learning-styles including theory-based sessions, practical and collaborative group discussions, case studies and short presentations by relevant industry leading guest speakers to deliver an all-encompassing overview of the role of finance within organisations.
• Throughout the programme you also work on a team assignment, combining your learnings from each module, which you present to the group during the final afternoon.
• We aim for several stand-out learning experiences, including:
• Applied Learning - A learning environment created by the course facilitator that draws on the experience and input of your course peers.
• Knowledge Transfer - A steady stream of feedback from participating peers with diverse business backgrounds.
• Reflection - A rare time-out to contemplate your own skills and development while engaging with our world-class faculty.
• Network Expansion - An expanding professional network drawn from your peers.
• Personal Growth - An expanding self-awareness of your own competencies and how they can be honed.
• Behavioural Change - An adoption of new rationales and mindsets that improve strategic decision making in regards to corporate finance.

How You Benefit:

• Increase your understanding of finance and key financial metrics
• Learn fundamental finance terms and language
• Gain practical skills for interpreting and evaluating financial data
• Develop the confidence to have insightful financial conversations, identifying the right questions to ask
• Understand the crucial and ever-increasing role of ESG performance in corporate finance decisions and their outcome
• Become a member of the AMBS Executive Education Network and benefit from top-class speaker events, regular updates and networking opportunities with like-minded professionals
• Demonstrate your commitment to continued professional development and gain expert insights through real-world case studies and industry speakers

Who Should Attend:

• Whether you are from a public, private or not-for-profit organisation, finance is at the core of all businesses, so anyone with a position of responsibility should understand the fundamentals of how to spend money wisely.
• Finance for Non-Financial Leaders has been designed for business executives from a broad range of disciplines, sizes and industries, this course has been built for professionals who want to strengthen their financial knowledge, establish better communication channels across teams and master the language of finance to understand how financial decisions impact everyone within a business.