COURSE
NUMBER: MBA218A.1
Note: This course is dual-listed with the
Evening-Weekend MBA program
COURSE
TITLE: International
Finance
UNITS
OF CREDIT: 3 Units
INSTRUCTOR: Richard Lyons
E-MAIL
ADDRESS: lyons@haas.berkeley.edu
PREREQUISITE(S): 201B Macroeconomics,
203 Finance
CAREER
FIELD:
One-third of the course delivers skills for careers in international asset
management: global asset allocation, international asset classes, managing
portfolio exchange rate risk, and other key topics.
One third of the class delivers skills for international corporate finance for
careers as a CFO or international banker: managing global operating exposures,
critical topics in international accounting, using currency swaps to manage
exchange-rate risk, and other key topics.
One third of
the course is material that anyone aspiring to do international business of any
kind needs to know: How floating exchange rates are determined, international
financial parity conditions, currency-related financial instruments (including
cryptocurrencies, stable-coins, and tokenized assets), and other key topics.
CLASS
FORMAT: We
will do 4-5 cases, i.e., case intensity is moderate. My teaching style is quite
interactive, so lectures will include a lot of participation.
REQUIRED
READINGS: I
do my best to assign only readings that are most essential. The bargain is that
I expect you to have done the reading, which makes the in-class participation
more productive for all. There is a text, Multinational Financial Management,
by Alan Shapiro. I augment that with more advanced, targeted readings.
BASIS
FOR FINAL GRADE:
Problem sets (4) 30 percent; applied project (teams up to 3, topic your choice,
and less than 10 pages) 30 percent; and final 40%.
ABSTRACT
OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: I included much of the topic
specificity in my one-third/one-third/one-third description above. I would only
add here that I do my best to keep the course as relevant and up-to-date as
possible, e.g., by starting most every session by distributing a recent article
from The Economist or
similar publication that connects to course topics. My objective is to get you
as excited about, and we’ll-prepared for, careers that will touch international
finance in one way or another.
BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCH:
My research focuses on how the trading of currencies aggregates information in
setting market-determined exchange rates (i.e., floating exchange rates). I
have been on the Berkeley Haas faculty since 1993. I served 11 years as dean of
Haas and two years just prior to that as Chief Learning Officer at Goldman
Sachs.