Corporate FinTech

Study Board of Market and Management Anthropology, Economics, Mathematics-Economics, Environmental and Resource Management

Teaching language: English
EKA: B560056112, B560056102
Censorship: Second examiner: None
Grading: Pass/Fail, 7-point grading scale
Offered in: Odense
Offered in: Spring
Level: Master

Course ID: B560056101
ECTS value: 5

Date of Approval: 05-11-2019


Duration: 1 semester

Course ID

B560056101

Course Title

Corporate FinTech

Teaching language

English

ECTS value

5

Responsible study board

Study Board of Market and Management Anthropology, Economics, Mathematics-Economics, Environmental and Resource Management

Date of Approval

05-11-2019

Course Responsible

Name Email Department
David Florysiak florysiak@sam.sdu.dk Institut for Virksomhedsledelse og Økonomi

Offered in

Odense

Level

Master

Offered in

Spring

Duration

1 semester

Mandatory prerequisites

-

Recommended prerequisites

Bachelor of Science in Economics, Mathematics and Economics or Business Administration (with finance courses corresponding to a BSc in Economics).
This course requires that the student has prior knowledge of financial markets, financial instruments (e.g., options, futures, forwards) and, in particular, basic corporate finance. The latter includes knowledge about, e.g., the valuation of real assets and capital structure issues - e.g., for uncertain cash flow streams the student must be able to use risk neutral valuation to compute their values in a binomial model and apply this to address debt and equity holder conflicts. Standard concepts from finance such as e.g. the principle of no arbitrage, pay-off diagrams, and discounting must also be mastered. All these competences are acquired in the course "Finansiering, investering og virksomhedsstrategi" (course no. 9161001) based on the textbook:
*David Hillier, Mark Grinblatt and Sheridan Titman: Financial Markets and Corporate Strategy, European Edition, Irwin/McGraw-Hill, latest edition.
The student must have an elementary background in mathematics and probability theory. In particular one should be able to compute expectations, conditional probabilities, variances, and covariances of random variables whether their distribution is discrete (e.g., binomial) or continuous (e.g., normal). Finally, it is highly recommended that the student is familiar with simple optimization methods (e.g., first-order conditions and Lagrange optimization). These are all competences acquired in the courses "Matematik" (course no. 9105701) and "Statistik" (course no. 9116001) which are based on the textbooks:
* Knut Sydsaeter and Peter Hammond, Essential Mathematics for Economic Analysis, Pearson Education, latest edition.
* Malcow-Møller, N. og Allan Würtz "Indblik i Statistik", latest edition.

Aim and purpose

Financial Technology (FinTech) and recent financial innovations are disrupting the traditional financial industry. This course starts with a discussion on how the field of corporate finance may be reshaped by technology. For example, crowdfunding or initial coin offerings (ICOs) provide new financing channels and provide alternatives to traditional equity financing such as venture capital, private equity, or an IPO. Vast amounts of internal and publicly available data (e.g. from social media) increase the importance and create new opportunities of financial data analytics (e.g. big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence applications) to support financing and investment decisions.
This course is directed toward finance professionals and data scientists alike. Participants learn the fundamentals of how to setup a financial problem and formulate it in a way such that a data scientist is able to effectively develop machine learning or artificial intelligence applications to solve the problem at hand. This requires the finance professional to understand how data scientists work and vice versa. The aim of this course is to equip students with an interdisciplinary skillset that is required for future finance professionals and data scientists. 
The focus is on financial data analytics and practical applications in (corporate) finance and includes core financial data analytics methods and a special emphasis on natural language processing applications in finance.
Students also learn how to acquire data, for example, from databases such as Bloomberg, ThomsonReuters, S&P Capital IQ (Compustat), using public APIs or web-scraping. The main programming language for developing applications is Python. No advanced programming knowledge is required. Introductions to Python are provided where necessary. Selected applications may include:
•Estimating borrower default risk in crowdlending
•Fraud detection in ICOs using natural language processing.
•Performance analysis of crypto-listed firms.
•Implementing trading strategies for crypto-listed firms.
•Backtesting: Data mining, p-hacking and multiple testing issues

Content

Financial Data Analytics and Applications

Learning goals

To fulfill the purposes of the course the student must be able to:

Description of outcome - Knowledge

Demonstrate knowledge about the course’s focus areas enabling the student to:
•Explain and reflect upon on different financial data analytics methodologies.
•Explain and reflect upon using financial data analytics to support financing and investment decisions.

Description of outcome - Skills

Demonstrate skills, such that the student is able to:
•Acquire data, for example, from databases such as Bloomberg, ThomsonReuters, or S&P Capital IQ (Compustat), using public APIs, or using web-scraping.
•Formulate financial problems taking the view of both finance professionals and data scientists. 
•Solve financial problems using data analytics, e.g. using basic machine learning algorithms.

Description of outcome - Competences

Demonstrate competences, such that the student is able to:
•Identify new business cases that employ financial data analytics to increase firm value.

Literature

Examples:
•Berk, Jonathan B., and Peter M. DeMarzo, Corporate Finance, 4th edition, Pearson Education, 2017.
•Hilpisch, Yves, Python for Finance: Mastering Data-Driven Finance, 2nd edition, O'Reilly Media, 2018.
•Florysiak, David and Schandlbauer, Alexander, The Information Content of ICO White Papers, 2019. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=3265007
•Howell, Sabrina, Marina Niessner, and David Yermack, Initial Coin Offerings: Financing Growth with Cryptocurrency Sales, Review of Financial Studies (forthcoming).

Teaching Method

The course will consist of lectures and exercise and programming sessions.

Workload

4 hours of lectures weekly for 5.75 non-consecutive weeks.
The lecturing period can be extended due to intervening project or assignment work.
In addition, there is project work in intervening periods of the semester.

Workload:
The students' workload is expected to be distributed as follows: 
Lectures - 23 hours 
Preparation - 34 hours
Assignments/presentations - 30 hours
Examination - 48 hours
Total 135 hours.

Examination regulations

Exam

Name

Exam

Timing

Home assignments (part 1):
Exam: During the semester
Reexam: August

Final exam (part 2):
Exam: June
Reexam: August

Tests

Home assignments (part 1)

Name

Home assignments (part 1)

Form of examination

Take-home assignment

Censorship

Second examiner: None

Grading

Pass/Fail

Identification

Student Identification Card - Date of birth

Language

English

Duration

One week. Date for submission will appear in the examination plan.

Length

No limitations.

Examination aids

All exam aids allowed.

Assignment handover

Course page in Blackboard.

Assignment handin

Via SDUassignment in the course page in Blackboard.

ECTS value

1

Additional information

Compulsory assignment solved in groups of up to three students. The instructor is in charge of approving the groups.
The compulsory assignment consists of 2 weekly sub-assignments. The 2 assignments must be answered satisfactorily in order to pass part 1. 
The sub-assignments for the compulsory assignment are only handed out in the ordinary semester in which lectures in the course are offered.
Internet Access: Necessary.

Re-examination

Form of examination

Oral examination with preparation

Identification

Student Identification Card - Date of birth

Preparation

20 minutes preparation. 

Duration

20 minutes. The examination is based on a randomly drawn topic, but it can also include questions in other topics from the syllabus.

Examination aids

All exam aids are allowed at the preparation

Additional information

The examination tests the students' achievement on all specified targets. 

EKA

B560056112

Final exam (part 2)

Name

Final exam (part 2)

Form of examination

Take-home assignment

Censorship

Second examiner: None

Grading

7-point grading scale

Identification

Student Identification Card - Exam number

Language

English

Duration

48 hours

Length

No limitations

Examination aids

All exam aids allowed.

Assignment handover

Course page in Blackboard.

Assignment handin

Via SDUassignment in the course page in Blackboard

ECTS value

4

Additional information

The examination tests the students' achievement on all specified targets. 

Re-examination

Form of examination

Oral examination

Identification

Student Identification Card - Date of birth

Preparation

20 minutes preparation. 

Duration

20 minutes. The examination is based on a randomly drawn topic, but it can also include questions in other topics from the syllabus.

Examination aids

All exam aids are allowed at the preparation

Additional information

The examination tests the students' achievement on all specified targets. 

EKA

B560056102

External comment

NOTE - This course is new and will only be offered for students who are enrolled in Data Science program but is co-taught with the 10 ECTS version with the same title.
Used examination attempts in the former identical course will be transferred.
Courses that are identical with former courses that are passed according to applied rules cannot be retaken.

The student is automatically registered for the first examination attempt when the student is registered for a course or course element with which one or more examinations are associated. Withdrawal of registration is not possible, and students who fail to participate in an examination have used one examination attempt, unless the University has made an exemption due to special circumstances. 


Courses offered

Offer period Offer type Profile Education Semester
Spring 2020 Optional Master of Science in Economics (with possibility of specialization) aktuel F20 MSc in Economics | Master of Science (MSc) in Economics | Odense

URL for Skemaplan