This pre-program provides participants with the basic tools necessary to garner meaningful insights from quantitative information, which is crucial for making informed business decisions. Serving as a prequel to our Quantitative Finance courses, the pre-program also helps participants hone fundamental numerical skills required for a strong performance in the core period.

The pre-program is a gateway to basic mathematical concepts and managerial statistics. You will explore linear equations, probability theory, descriptive statistics, as well as simple linear regression analysis in an interactive way, giving you the confidence for your future finance, economics, accounting and operations management courses.

Career Success is a comprehensive mandatory course designed in collaboration with top recruiters, alumni and education providers with a clear goal: equipping Master in Finance students with key skills they will need to succeed in their Career Strategy. The foundations acquired through the classes during the academic year will be complemented by advising sessions (group and one-onone) with general and sector-specific advisors, as well as with the numerous employer relations activities that Talent & Careers brings to students (Job Postings, Talent Forums, Events, and Networking opportunities, among others). We know that to succeed professionally, an early start can make of a big difference. Thus, this pre-program aims to support students setting up the bases for their career development and providing them with a head start of their Career Success.

This program teaches participants the main accounting concepts over the course of three sessions. Through a practical approach, you will understand the fundamentals of the financial accounting process as well as how to interpret financial information. This pre-program will dive into the main accounting issues companies deal with, including financial statement analysis and the relationship between accounting and markets.

Spread across three modules, the Introduction to Valuation program introduces participants to the analytical tools and methods used to value companies in real-life situations. The first module is dedicated to intrinsic valuation modeling techniques, the second explores comparable companies’ methodologies, and the third focuses on valuation in the context of M&A. The program uses a strong practical approach and will be based in Excel.

This program gives you the foundational skills and knowledge necessary to create and manage a portfolio. Providing you with an analytical background and practical experience, you will learn about investment policy statements, asset returns/risks, and approaches to managing and analyzing equity portfolios.

Throughout the program, you will be coached by experts from the IE Talent & Careers department on a variety of topics. These will be highly technical sessions related to finance, in topics ranging from how to prepare an effective CV, writing a cover letter, networking effectively and how to prepare for the Assessment Center simulation. You will also be advised on the resources available for students through the IE Talent & Careers department, as well as liaise with external industry professionals to understand how different sub-sectors of the finance industry work.

Understanding the interaction between macro and markets is a surefire way to boost your employability. Topics covered in this course will prepare you for complex questions that come up in interviews and for the world of work. You will learn to form, present and defend your viewpoint on the future of macro and finance, to identify and analyze both data and current global market shifts and their implications, and about how macro and markets interact.

The IE Trading Room pre-program provides students with the analytical software and research used by professional money managers. This course will explore Bloomberg, FactSet, and MATLAB—tools that provide access to financial, market, business, economic and security pricing information. You will learn to use the various analytical features to analyze portfolio risk, performance and securities including stocks, bonds, commodities, options and futures, currencies and more.

The objective of this workshop is to provide students with an introduction to the Case Method of learning that includes the three learning stages: Individual preparation, small group discussion and large group discussion.

The objective of this course is to give an introduction to the fundamental principles of asset valuation on the basis of Time Value of Money and Net Present Value, as this forms the foundation of the investment appraisal framework used by most companies. Thanks to this course, students will become more comfortable with NPV calculations as well as shortcuts, and this knowledge will prove useful for the core courses within the program.