→ The link between working capital and financial statements
→ Management interpretation of ratios as a performance tool
→ Peer group benchmarking and operational implications
→ Liquidity measurement / management and free cash flows
→ The use and abuse of EBITDA
→ Funding strategies – aggressive or a conservative approach
Exercise
→ Importance of long-term investment decisions
→ How can we be sure we are creating value?
→ The importance of management incentives and agency risks
• Return on Investment
• Return on Capital Employed
• Residual Income measures
→ Developing a conceptual distinction between value creation and destruction
→ Techniques of screening projects and evaluating investment alternatives
→ Cash-based versus profit-based assessments -- strengths and weaknesses
→ How to determine free cash flows and how they are used
• Free cash flow to equity and to all capital providers
Exercise
→ Understanding company cost of capital and relationship to cash flow risks
→ Demystifying risk betas and the capital asset pricing model (CAPM)
• The building blocks of systematic and unsystematic risk
• Distinguishing between financial risk and business risk
→ Developing a weighted average cost of capital (WACC) for a business
→ Modigliani and Miller’s capital structure theory – the role of debt and taxes
→ Impact of dividend policy and its relevance to corporate value
Exercise
→ Earnings, assets and cash-based methods
→ Dividend valuation model, price/ earnings (PE) and EBITA multiples
→ Options based valuations – more complex valuation exercises
Exercise
→ Managing interest rate risk
• Getting liability structure right
• Managing assets and liabilities
• Transformation of long-term interest
rate structure
• Mechanism and how to use interest rate
swaps
→ Managing currency risk
• Cross currency borrowings
• Currency swaps
Exercise
→ Some celebrated significant scandals
• WorldCom
• Bernie Madoff
• Enron
→ Discussion and analysis of red flags in
Enron’s financial statements
Negotiating Financial Difficulties
→ The challenges of corporate integration
and restructuring - the do’s and don’ts
→ Methodology of a financial restructuring
→ Approach to assess if a reconstruction is
viable
→ The underpinnings of a reconstruction plan
Exercise