Fundamentals of Corporate Finance

Introduction: What does corporate finance involve?

• Main business areas 
• Day to day working in a corporate finance business
• Key skills for practitioners 
• The good things … and the challenges

What do CF transactions require?

• Clear objectives
• An strong investment case
• Commitment 
• Clear messages
• Good planning/ Well managed process

 What does any good process entail?

• Clear focus on investors/ counterparts
• What information and when?
• Reasonable timelines
• Criteria for decision
• How to have reasoned disagreement 

 What does raising money call for?

• What makes a good investment case?
• What are appropriate returns to offer?
• What do we mean by a ’Story’?
• Why do people matter so much?

 What does M&A entail?

• Why does M&A happen? Drivers: understand why businesses are bought and sold
• What makes a good opportunity? ROIC-WACC as analogy to investment returns
• Why is focus important? The importance of targeting: buyers (sell side)/ targets (buy)
• How do we go about this? Strategic choices: type of process
• Why does communication matter? The key to good buyer/ seller dialogue

 Demystifying why this is a complex, multi-dimensional process: Key process components to understand

• Short sections on each of:
  • Valuation
  • Sequencing
  • Due diligence
  • Information flow
  • Choosing a preferred bidder
  • Closing the deal
  • What the lawyers need from the CF

 Conclusion: what makes a good practitioner

• Key client relationship skills
• Project management
• Grasp of detail
• Anticipation
• Good and bad behaviours 
• Judgement: good and bad business

The session delivers essential introductory learnings for anyone starting a career in corporate finance, It draws content from several of Redcliffe’s popular, long-established corporate finance and M&A courses in a condensed and easily digestible half-day session.

The emphasis is on a practical introduction to corporate finance work: raising money, and buying and selling businesses.

The teaching is enlivened by real-world examples and experience throughout, combined with a straightforward explanation of the underlying rationale.

The half day format allows participants to accelerate their learning in an efficient and engaging session.

The trainer has worked on corporate finance and capital markets transactions for over thirty years, holding positions on the client side as well as leading advisory teams.

At the Department of Energy, he was a civil servant involved in the privatisation of British Gas, a global IPO involving a large advisory team. He also spent two years (1990-92) in the Hungarian Government privatisation agency working with many advisory firms, as the changing political environment triggered massive ownership change. He has worked in major investment banks (Swiss Bank Corporation International – now UBS - and Lazard) and also co-founded a successful M&A advisory boutique firm. In 2021 he retired from KPMG, where he spent 13 years in the firm’s global M&A business, based in Scotland.

His experience combines a broad range of M&A and equity transactions in North and Central America, Asia Pacific, and all the major European countries, plus, most recently, in Africa. His courses draw deeply on case studies from transactions he has run, bringing practical examples to set alongside the theory.

The course delivers five key learning objectives to help focus and advance a career in corporate finance.

• Client service: what corporate financiers do, day to day, and their overriding objective on behalf of their clients
• Why finance is sought and raised: understanding the motives on each side of the transaction 
• What buying and selling businesses entails
• How to manage a corporate finance process
• Lastly, the ability to give clients good, clear and trusted advice in these compels and sensitive areas 

If you are looking for a course that’s led by an experienced trainer, you’ve come to the right place. Our trainer, a corporate financier with over 30 years of experience in corporate finance advisory work, has designed this course with these distinctive characteristics:

• Focused wholly on those learning corporate finance from scratch
• Clear presentations of what corporate finance processes entail 
• Brings the theory to life though practical examples 
• Demonstrates the requirements for a successful transaction
• Focus on teaching and developing key skills
• Encourages rapid progression through to manage projects and transactions 

This course is a practical guide for anyone who wants to learn what corporate finance is really all about. It makes clear what corporate finance entails, and the key challenges and choices involved in corporate finance projects. Lastly it helps accelerate learning, understanding and career progression for ambitious, though still relatively inexperienced, practitioners.