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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Advanced Valuation and Strategy - M&A, Private Equity, and Venture Capital by Erasmus University Rotterdam

4.6
stars
1,257 ratings

About the Course

Hi and welcome to this course! Would you like to learn about the latest valuation methods that may help you to make better business decisions? Then 'Advanced Valuation and Strategy – M&A, Private Equity, and Venture Capital' by Erasmus University Rotterdam is the right course for you! This course is helpful for executives that need to value complete strategies and for all students interested in corporate finance and strategy. We present the latest tools and show you how to apply them! We will revolutionize your way of decision making, by extending static techniques from corporate finance with dynamic methods to quantify strategic thinking. Traditionally, we assess the attractiveness of an investment as a mature business, where future cash flows mainly result from past decisions. But, in an ever-changing world, strategic decisions determine the firm’s long-term success and market value. Yet managers often have to consider these long-term implications using intuition and experience alone, with little guidance from structured, quantitative analysis. Our treatment goes far beyond the use of standard valuation analysis. We introduce the expanded NPV, which brings together DCF, real options, and game theory. Thinking in terms of options, games, and adaptive strategies may help managers address strategic questions such as: How do you value a leveraged buyout? How can you value a high-tech venture with negative cash flows? When should you invest in new ventures in stages? How can you incorporate rival bidders in the analysis? The tools we provide can improve your decisions in business and in daily life. * Who is this class for? We hope that our course appeals to (graduate) students in finance, economics, and business, as well as to high-ranking professionals and a general audience. This course is particularly interesting for venture capitalists, private equity investors, investment bankers, CEOs, CFOs, and those who aspire these affiliations. We offer this MOOC at 3 levels: 1.Executive Summary: This 1-week module provides critical insights into the principles of corporate valuation and strategy. This is accessible for time-constrained executives and the general audience without any prior knowledge. 2. Student Level: This level involves an understanding of the technical details. This level requires basic knowledge of concepts in corporate finance, e.g., the time value of money, financial statement analysis, capital structure, and the relation between risk and returns. Learners of this level can skip week 1. 3. Honors Level (honors certificate): This level is challenging, engaging, and compelling to an intellectually rigorous student....

Top reviews

AS

May 18, 2020

Boosts your up-to-date understanding of how strategy and valuation come together. It helped me better understand my PE clients' buy & build strategies from a growth option valuation perspective.

DH

Aug 6, 2023

Great course- the material is engaging, and the assessments are challenging. The honours case study is worth doing to test your knowledge, plus the case study is a classic and well documented.

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1 - 25 of 337 Reviews for Advanced Valuation and Strategy - M&A, Private Equity, and Venture Capital

By Gustavo T O

Jan 30, 2019

In my opinion, this course should be better organised in terms of the information provided during webcasts/readings and the required knowledge to answer que quizzes (it does not always match). It was frustrating how long it took me to complete this course, since I had to do a lot of extra research in order to complete the tasks. Besides the missing information, there are also some minor errors in the material provided that end up being time consuming before you realise what's going on. Extra research is not a bad thing at all, but it should be considered when someone estimates how long it will take to complete the course (it took me much more than 5 hours a week). Maybe this course is too ambicious in terms of what it covers in five weeks, or maybe it is just my lack of experience in the topic, but that's why I decided to take the course in first place.

By Michael D

Jun 9, 2019

Could break videos into PowerPoint slides to explain formulas.methods used. I paused the videos to copy the information a lot.

By Pavel B

Sep 27, 2018

This is a fantastic course that provides you with the all the necessary knowledge and tools to perform a valuation of any given company. Apart from that, this course will provide you with the understanding of real options and how they can be applied in valuation analysis. Professor Han Smit of Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands developed a unique approach to company valuation: while the majority of textbooks on this topic focuses only on DCF models, this course is the complete opposite as it. It combines all latest scientific knowledge on the subject of corporate finance, strategy and real options and take the best tools out of those discipline to connect them in one robust framework that will allow you to to perform valuation analysis of any given company and will make you to stand apart from your peers who blindly employ DCF analysis exclusively without considering assumptions that are necessary to perform valuation accurately. Well, now you have unique opportunity to acquire the best knowledge and tools of company valuation, that, apart from making you more knowledgeable in the field of finance, will make you better decision-maker, be it when it comes to investment or any other complicated decision-making process you will have to make. Due to the depth and attention to details that professor Smit makes when explaining the concepts of valuation analysis, perhaps the strongest point of Advanced Valuation and Strategy course is that you can start straight applying tools and technique you are about to learn from this course. The take away here: take this course, prepare to grasp the complex fundamentals of valuation analysis as well as prepare to learn techniques that real-word Finance professionals employ and you will acquire a comprehensive understanding of valuation analysis from a practitioner point of view.

By Effy Z

Sep 29, 2018

There are way too many typos in the subtitles and that highly decreases the quality of the webcasts. Students are trying to learn something out of the webcasts and bad subtitles really give me lots of unnecessary confusion.

Second of all, I found the explanations in the webcasts are not very clear. It didn't give me a better understanding of the theories and the applications behind the theories, especially the optional videos in week 4. Maybe this is subjective, but that is my opinion.

I don't think it is necessary to add more languages into the subtitles. Accuracy and precision are way more important.

By Tú T

Aug 5, 2019

The course offers both excellent theoretical framework and quantitative rigor. Unconventional perspective shared by the professor you would not typically find in M&A textbooks out there.

By Alvaro R C M

Jul 14, 2020

The course was really interesting, especially how is developed the concept of Expanded NPV, which combined, standard NPV with real-options and game theory in valuation.

The course provide a broad vision of the subject and it is essential to have previous corporate finance knowledge.

As a point to improve, the course should offer additional reading material since the information in the videos is not enough to answer the questions asked in the tests, which are very long and require good preparation.

Since it is a distance learning course, this requires students to be searching on internet for the right resources and it causes an additional waste of time. Other courses provide this reading material.

If you participate in the forum, you can deduct that Prof Smit's book is used as a reference to understand in greater detail the topics covered. The book is not easy to find online.

By Bruno A C K

Jan 26, 2020

The course is very consistent and didactic, with hands-on approach and simple language. It described, it is an advanced course and requires economics, finance knowledge.

By Dan

Jan 31, 2019

Very advanced course in corporate valuation and in corporate strategy. Having a good understanding of basic corporate finance topics is recommended.

By Abhimanyu S

Jul 22, 2021

too complicated , unable to do assignments and voice of professor is not cleared at all. have to read subtitiles

really struggled to go through 1st modue only. and lack of sheets was also there nodays days no one calculate such huge calculations its no more required to calculate in numbers. i dont know for whom this course is made because i itself am a investment banker and if we all started to take into consideration such blunder difficult way of calculation then soon there will no more investors. not relavant at all

By Alexander M S

Feb 25, 2021

Really not a good course! Topics are bad explained and exercises are calculated without rounding but show rounded numbers. Extremely confusing and not well done!

By Sangam P

Aug 8, 2020

Level of Video Lectures are far below than the level of Final quizes provided here. I'm completely disappointed.

By Lucas C R

Dec 10, 2020

They do not explain everything they ask on the test. You have to lookup by yourself.

By Tinyiko N

Jan 20, 2019

Excellent course that has practical implementation in daily decision making. I assumed an overlap with the CFA syllabus, however this was more advanced in that it included option game valuation which in an insightful addition to strategic net present value. Thoroughly enjoyed the content and engagement on the discussion forums.

By Andre S

May 19, 2020

Boosts your up-to-date understanding of how strategy and valuation come together. It helped me better understand my PE clients' buy & build strategies from a growth option valuation perspective.

By Tobias F

Feb 28, 2020

Demanding at times but overall one of the better courses that make you think before you have to answer. I also enjoyed the ability to do some extra work if you are into honorable certificate.

By Sophie M

Dec 8, 2018

This course was fun to follow and actually taught me new insights! (eventhough I already had a lot of different finance courses). Would definitely recommend

By Johan S

Sep 26, 2018

Great topic, great content, great explanatory animations!

By Mauro Q

Jan 29, 2019

A must for all those engaged in Corporate Finance

By Jana R

Aug 10, 2019

Very useful and insightful, although the practice quizzes and end-week quizzes did not completely overlap with the weekly lecture.

By Wisani M

Apr 27, 2020

Very informative but sometimes struggled to hear and understand Prof. Han, due to his accent and speaking too fast.

Thank you!

By Thomas L M

Sep 28, 2018

Videos are very well organised and they allow to have a clearer view of the topic. One thing I would add is some more brief readings or extracts from some book chapters in order to be able to dig deeper into the subject and to better follow the reasoning. Apart from this, it's been very useful as the lecturer was able to make difficult concepts very easy to understand.

By Deleted A

Feb 4, 2019

What an excellent course! I like the way how difficult topics are explained through the awesome animated videos. The course is very challenging and of a very high level. I have learned a lot. Thank you for this wonderful course!

By Bo

Jan 18, 2019

Great course for those that work and want a solid overview of important valuation material. More advanced content than in other courses and very helpful instructors!

By Peter A

Sep 18, 2019

There is little explanation of complex concepts

By Sofiya L

Dec 30, 2020

The tests are way too hard in relation to the information provided in the course. Many questions are not explained well in the videos or in the reading material

It could be helpful to have a shorter period between test trials

In general, a good course if you are prepared to invest a lot of time in self-learning and looking for additional information