This course explores a comprehensive set of financial situations that arise in high-growth and high-risk enterprises. It focuses primarily on the investment phase of the private equity cycle and examines the investment strategy, valuation, and structure of ventures in their formative stages prior to becoming public companies. A range of enterprises are examined from early stage (venture capital) to late stage (mezzanine financing and buyouts) to provide perspective on how the maturity of an organization influences the nature and structure of financing and valuation. Issues related to the measurement of returns in private equity funds, valuing enterprises at different stages of development, and structuring deals using various forms of financing are covered as well as the analytical methods to better measure performance and value enterprises. Students will examine how each party's view of the value of the enterprise forms a basis for negotiation upon which the percentage of equity participation and the terms of the contract are determined as well as how the pricing and terms depend not only the deal itself but also upon prevailing market conditions. As private equity firms are either rapidly growing or changing organizations, students will learn that there must be sufficient flexibility and appropriate incentives built into the current round of capital raising and the contract terms to carry the firm through its next stage of development.

The course gives students the opportunity to hear marketing experts discuss the most current marketing issues facing companies today. Each class will feature a speaker who will either introduce a new issue to the class or bring a different perspective on an issue already introduced by a previous speaker. The content of the course will vary according to what topics are in the news as well as the availability of speakers. Prerequisites: Restricted toDarden students.

This course is intended to provide students with an understanding of the design and use of planning and control systems to facilitate the implementation of an organization's strategy. Many organizations have discovered that having a great strategy is not enough if the right structures and processes are not in place to implement that strategy.

The course offers a means for students to gain direct exposure to the world of practical affairs by engaging Darden alumni with expertise in technology and operations management. It will expose students to a range of emerging issues and topics in technology management and operations management and will be organized around four topic areas to enable in-depth discussions over multiple class sessions.Prerequisites: Restricted to Darden students.

The course focuses on capital raising in the United States and international markets and has as its ultimate goal a greater understanding of the capital acquisition process while it emphasizes capital raising in public markets. The course covers the institutional process of security issuance, the formal rules and regulations as well as the informal norms and practices of the marketplace. Issuance in public security markets entails strict adherence to these rules and regulations that govern the marketplace. While these rules place more limitations on managers' actions than private placements, the United States and the developed world's capital markets offer firms the broadest array of possible funding sources at the lowest cost. Students will survey a number of commonly used financing arrangements, such as follow-on equity issues, initial public offerings, ADRs, and several forms of straight and convertible debt. The course targets students with professional interests in corporate finance, commercial and investment banking, financial services, and management consulting.

Investors are increasingly interested in making investments that are consistent with their individual environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals. This course explores how public capital markets are designed and regulated so that these investor goals can be achieved with some assurance that firms will take desirable action.

To hone their skills for working with others successfully in business, students in this course will use recent research on cognition as well as experiential activities in group decision making to help students develop strategies to avoid mistakes and improve collaboration and thrive in ambiguous situations.

In this course, students study the tools of microeconomics that shed light on the structural industry characteristics and global and local forces that afford an understanding of economic change at the industry level. These tools are applied to rapidly changing industries characterized by high levels of innovation, network economic effects, important roles of information and information asymmetry, and other complex forces.

The purpose of this course is to enable the students to develop a comprehensive "theory of business" that will guide their business careers and inform their leadership. Key sections of the course include: (1) A Philosophical Perspective on Business: What is Real and How Do We Know? (2) Capitalism and Business: Historical, Global, and Modern Perspectives; (3) Business and the Institutions of Society: The Role of Government, Media, NGOs.

This is a survey course on the institutions and products that make up the capital markets. Major themes in the course include financial innovation and its role in making the financial markets and the economy more efficient. An emphasis is placed on the redistribution of risk among market participants and the reduction in the spread between what borrowers pay and what lenders receive. The course is designed as a broad overview and is not a technical course. It is valuable not only for students interested in finance but also for those with general management aspirations.