This course is specifically designed to complement the course "Foundations in Investments" taught by Prof. Rudolf. However, students with a business background might also choose this course without visiting Prof. Rudolf's course, if they have previously been visiting courses in Capital Budgeting (NPV, IRR, etc.) and Financial Instruments (derivatives).

We will apply the tools from financial theory on real case studies, most of which are taken from Harvard Business School. Each case study will consist of an introduction to the case setting and group work. We will use Excel for solving some of the case problems.

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- Theory of financial intermediation
- Financial institutions
- Management of financial institutions I - III
- Primary markets for equity and debt 
- Secondary markets for equity, debt, currencies
- Asset securitization
- Payments, clearing, settlement
- Regulation and supervision I + II
- Banking and the central bank
- The subprime crisis

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Accounting is the means of measuring business success. The information on business performance provided by cost accounting is crucial for making rational decisions and controlling activities. The course offers a comprehensive introduction to the fundamentals of cost accounting. It will provide an overview of essential concepts and tools of cost accounting needed by future managers. The understanding of concepts and tools will be deepened by giving examples and exercises. 

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The primary function of marketing is to facilitate exchange of value in the market place. For this purpose managers need to understand, both, how to create a value proposition and how to deliver it most profitably to the customers. A solid understanding of the needs of the customers, capabilities of the competitors, motivations of the intermediaries, and finally the competencies of ones own organization is fundamental for successful marketing plans. This course introduces basic concepts, tools, and frameworks in marketing combined with practical examples. A broad range of marketing issues in a variety of consumer, industrial, and service environments is covered. Topics include buying behaviour, marketing research, strategic aspects of marketing and marketing mix.

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The purpose of the course Introduction to Strategic Management is to equip students with the core concepts, frameworks, and techniques of strategic management. To achieve this, the course follows an analytical approach. If strategic management is about managing the organization in order to achieve superior performance, then the essential tasks of strategy are to identify the sources of profit available to the business, to formulate and to implement a strategy that exploits these sources of profit. Thus, the course at first lays the foundation of strategic management and defines what strategy is, what types of strategies exist and how competitive advantage can be obtained. Following a market-based approach, the course then explores the interrelationship between strategy and the environment. Therefore, the course describes how companies can forecast their environments and analyze their industry. Finally, the course takes a resource-based view of the company and shows how organizations can create advantage by developing unique resources. Throughout the course, exercises and case studies are used to enable students to apply the concepts, frameworks, and techniques learned within the course.

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The discipline of law and economics tries to answer two questions. How do legal norms affect the behavior of actors? Are the results of these actions socially desirable? Economists look at legal norms as instruments to achieve social goals. In this course we deal with the economic effects of the rules of tort law. From an economic perspective tort law should provide incentives for tortfeasor and victim alike to reduce damages to a reasonable or efficient level. Insofar the liability for harm competes with regulation of safety by norms of administrative law. How should society strike the balance between regulatory and tort law? When is negligence and when is strict liability better to achieve the social goal? Causation is an important concept in tort law and we show that different rules of causation can produce very different outcomes. Other questions are: fair compensation for pain and suffering, pure economic loss in torts and torts in the market place. In particular, we will discuss the Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR) in which a study group has proposed a unified tort law for the European Union, which is however –and rightfully- highly disputed. Successful participation in the course does not require any knowledge of microeconomic theory or welfare economics. I shall introduce the necessary economic concepts in the classroom. Knowledge of basic concepts of tort law is however helpful.

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