The course is taught in a blended format using a combination of class meetings and attached individual pre- and post-course digital learning phases. It will make use of a variety of teaching material (e.g. Power Point slides, textbooks, videos, articles from academic journals and the business press, cases, exercises). Due to its workload, a significant part of the course consists of a student’s individual study of the relevant pre-course preparatory material and mastering of assignments before and after the meetings in class. Preparing case studies and other compulsory material before class is important to enable effective work and progress during this intensive class. Two multiple-choice quizzes will take place. To participate in these quizzes you need a device (e.g. smartphone, tablet, laptop) that can be connected to the CANVAS platform https://learn.wu.ac.at. Students are expected to participate actively in class. Therefore, attendance of at least 80% of total class time is required to get a passing grade of the course. Assignments missed due to missed classes cannot be compensated. In case of illness/injury preventing a student from participating, a medical certificate is required as documentary evidence.

Course structure: 

• 30 teaching hours +  

• 13 e-learning hours +  

• 2 hours exam = 

• 45 hours total 

Students deliverables: 

• attendance (80% of classes) 

• class participation (10% bonus) 

• week-to-week digital learning 

• online assignments (30% weight) 

• multiple choice quizzes (30% weight) 

• in-person final exam (40% weight) 

e-learning support: 

• Lecture casts 

• EXCEL master sheet & case sheet to support calculations and case work 

During the course, students 

• gain an understanding of the financial risks and opportunities of a global firm  

• gain a theoretical and conceptual knowledge on international financial management, 

• gain a systematic understanding of financial risk management techniques,  

• gain specific knowledge in one key area of strategic finance 

• become knowledgeable about hedging instruments, and 

• utilize theoretical knowledge to analyze and solve case studies dealing of financial decision problems in global firms. 

Attendance of at least 80% of total class time is required to get a passing grade of the course. 

The course covers topics of managerial finance with a focus on international finance at graduate level.  It is designed for students of management programs with an international focus and puts particular emphasis on financial decisions with strategic and practical relevance for top-level management. The emphasis throughout the course will be on taking advantage of being a global firm. The course uses blended learning techniques (online & offline components) and case-based teaching. Students are required to complete e-learning exercises between the sessions. 

The course addresses classic corporate finance topics with a particular focus on international finance in top management functions. 

The course covers topics such as: 

• Foreign Exchange Risk and Hedging (Sessions 1, 2, 4-6) 

• International Capital Budgeting & Cost of Capital (Sessions 7-8) 

• International Strategic Finance (Session 9) 

• International Finance Practice (Session 3) 

The course will include a guest session with experts from the finance industry or other internationally-oriented firms/industries. 

Grade composition and scale: 

• Online Assignments 30 % 

• Multiple choice quizzes 30 % 

• Final exam (individual) 40 % 

• Regular total: 100 % 

• Bonus (participation, ungraded online assignments, case discussions) 10 % 

• Total 110 % 

Notes:  

• This is a blended learning course. Part of teaching is done through online assignments. Not all online assignments are graded. All online assignments are mandatory. Skipping ungraded online assignments can influence ability to engage in class and participation points. 

• Class participation cannot be 100% objective since student statements vary in quality and not everybody rising his/her hand can be invited to speak every time. We will consider your contributions in (ungraded) online assignments and the discussion forum as sources for bonus points. As such, bonus points are curve graded with the most active students receiving the maximum of 10 points and less active students receive fewer points following an approximation of a normal. 

• There are natural resource constraints for written feedback on individual students. Please use open office hours for detailed inspections of your grade.  

• Ex-post corrections of grades are only justifiable in the case of grading errors and irregularities. Missing “just a few” points for a better grade is not valid justification for grade challenges as it violates the rules of fair and consistent grading across students. 

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Cheating, Plagiarism and AI course policy: 

The University’s general guidance for students on plagiarism and cheating can be found here: https://www.wu.ac.at/en/students/my-program/masters-student-guide/course-and-exam-information/plagiarism/ 

Any case of attempted or realized cheating or fraud during exams or other forms of assignments will be referred to the Vice-Rector for Academic Programs and Student Affairs and lead to the declaration of the work of all involved students to be invalid. This means that everyone involved in the  

misconduct will not be graded and banned from a subsequent registering for the course in question for a period of four months  

Students are expected to carefully review the following points regarding academic integrity. Acts of academic dishonesty include, but are not limited to, the following:  

• using words or graphs of a published or unpublished source (including AI sources) without referencing the source.  

• paraphrasing ideas of another person, whether written or verbal (e.g. personal communication, ideas from a verbal presentation) without referencing the source.  

• copying the answers of another student in any individual assignments.  

• providing answers to another student in any individual assignment.  

• taking any unauthorized materials into an examination or quiz  

• substituting another student or allowing another person to substitute oneself for the purpose of submitting academic work or writing any test or examination.  

Students should be aware that all instructors reserve the right to use a plagiarism detection software program to detect plagiarism for essays, case reports and other assignments.  

Important note concerning the use of AI (ChatGPT and similar tools) in the CEMS program and potentially also for assignments. There is, per se, nothing bad about that. You will need to learn how to use AI, that is, AI usage is an emerging skill. We will not focus on how to use AI in this class but I would like to highlight a couple of key points: 

Be aware of the limits of AI! 

• Your prompts and their quality will drive the quality of the output. You will need to refine your prompts in order to get good outcomes. 

• Don’t trust anything that the tool is writing. If it gives you some numbers or facts, you should assume that it is wrong unless you can either fact check with other sources, or unless you can be sure that you know that the information is correct. Ultimately, you will be responsible for errors or any other types of limitations that the tool produces. 

• AI is a tool and you need to acknowledge the use of it. Please include a paragraph at the end of any assignment that explains if and how you have used AI and what prompts you have used. Failure to do so is violates your pledge of academic honesty and can have serious consequences.  

• Note that the use of AI tools can be detected by WU plagiarism software, which I may activate for every assignment. In case that there is indication for undue AI usage, first, an audit interview with the student will be scheduled. Follow-up consequences will be determined afterwards.