Introduction to Corporate Finance

Finance moves at the speed of time: a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow, a principle that unlocks every corporate finance decision. This course, required for first-year MBAs at Columbia Business School, teaches you to value firms, bonds, and stocks using time-honored frameworks grounded in that reality. You'll master the time value of money, compute cost of capital, and evaluate whether a project destroys or creates value through net present value and internal rate of return calculations. Excel becomes your analytical tool, turning abstract concepts into concrete models. Taught by a world-class instructor actively shaping the next generation of finance leaders, this course prepares you not just to understand financial decisions but to make them confidently—whether in corporate roles or personal investing.