Two questions are at the core of any study relating to corporate financial decision-making (and more broadly Corporate Finance):
- How do firms optimally choose their investment projects?
- How do they decide among the pool of financing options for these projects?
Answering these two questions and understanding the issues involved will be the focus of this course. Initially, we will study these two questions independently from each other, starting with the capital budgeting (investing) decision of an all-equity financed project. We will then turn to the capital structure (financing) decision, which we will found using perfect capital markets arguments. Subsequently, we will introduce capital market imperfections and examine how these shape the cross-sectional variety of capital structures observed in the real life. Finally, we will combine the two decisions by looking into the valuation methods for levered projects and companies based on the knowledge acquired during the previous steps.

Prerequisites: Yes (see syllabus)