Programme Overview
Key Advantages
Our master's programme is meant for those who want to gain a deep understanding of finance, while simultaneously obtaining broad professional vision. The key focus of the SCF programme is corporate finance. Our program provides a unique combination of deep knowledge of modern financial theories and essential practical skills, equipping our graduates with competitve advantage in the market.
At the same time, the programme is built in such a way that it allows students to gain a broad spectrum of knowledge in other areas of finance and economics as well. Aside from corporate finance, our students study macroeconomics, microeconomics, econometrics, asset pricing, venture capital, value-based management, behavioural finance, and much more. Our graduates work in consulting and at leading investment banks, M&A advisory firms, and investment funds. Some become strategy consultants, and others – buy-side analysts and portfolio managers. Some develop their own business, conduct academic research, or build a career as a CFO in companies of the real sector. Our alumni live mostly in Moscow or London, but there are also those who have gone to New York, Amsterdam, Berlin, and even Sydney.
Curriculum
The Strategic Corporate Finance programme is taught by leading Russian academics, visiting international professors, and finance practitioners from major global companies. Students gain qualitative theoretical knowledge that will open a broad range of future professional opportunities, as well as practical skills that will set them apart from other candidates in the early steps of their careers. Core courses in macroeconomics, microeconomics, corporate finance, risk management, and corporate governance give students a strong foundation in finance theory, principles, and methods. A variety of practice-oriented courses in business valuation, M&A deals, financial modelling, and venture capital, for example, are carried out with the help of staff from B1, Kept, Business Solutions and Technologies, and other consulting firms and financial specialists with extensive experience in emerging markets.
Research Opportunities
The programme is unique in that it is a financial programme where learning is closely intertwined with the work of a research centre – the Corporate Finance Laboratory, which was created in 2006. Over the course of two years, students are given a broad range of unique academic opportunities. In 2007 the co-founder of the SCF programme, Tenured Professor Irina Ivashkovskaya, created the journal Corporate Finance. Several dozen of the journal’s articles were written by graduates of our programme (see cfjournal.hse.ru). Publishing in a peer-reviewed journal is an excellent opportunity to display the quality of your education to an employer.
Career Tracks
The SCF programme is a programme with a history. In our almost 10 years of work, many students have completed the programme as highly educated financiers. Our graduates have worked and do work for companies such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, ING, Accenture, Oliver Wyman, BCG, Roland Berger, Kearney, Gazprombank, VTB Capital, Sberbank CIB, Renaissance Capital, Rusnano, and an entire host of other companies and funds. It is not uncommon for our alumni to hire our students, being familiar with the high level or preparation that takes place within the SCF programme.
Career Tracks
The recent financial crisis showed:
- how important it is to understand the structure of financial markets, the interconnection between different markets, and the stimuli of the players on these markets; and
- how important it is to make the right investment and financial decisions in both the financial and the real sector given the complexity of the modern world.