The MMS: Finance is a two year, part-time program for working professionals in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The program is designed to provide students with a strong foundation in management studies, with a special emphasis on finance and accounting in a format that supports students' professional responsibilities.

The part-time program consists of 13 courses (three credits each for a total of 39 credits). The curriculum begins with one quantitative skills course to ensure that all incoming students are at a comparable level. Courses cover the full breadth of business disciplines and are complemented by four additional financial and accounting courses. 

Curriculum

The following courses make up the MMS: Finance degree curriculum.

1. Accounting: Introduction to Financial Accounting
2. Accounting: Accounting for Financial Analysis
3. Accounting: Analysis and Valuation
4. Decision Sciences: Quantitative Business Analysis
5. Decision Sciences: Spreadsheet Modeling and Decision Analysis
6. Economics: Fundamentals of Business Economics
7. Finance: Foundations of Capital Markets
8. Finance: Advanced Corporate Finance
9. Finance: Derivatives
10. Management: Foundations of Management and Organizations
11. Marketing: Introduction to Marketing Analysis
12. Operations: Introduction to Operations and Supply Chain Management
13. Strategy: Principles of Strategy

Course Descriptions

Accounting: Introduction to Financial Accounting
Financial accounting develops your ability to read, understand, and use corporate financial reports. Discover the basics of bookkeeping, accounting terminology, and fundamental accounting concepts, including the definitions of financial statement elements. Explore the accounting treatments of key transactions (e.g., making sales on credit to customers, collecting cash from those customers, raising capital). Understand how financial reports portray the effects of underlying economic events and use this portrayal to draw inferences about future profitability. Learn the financial reporting process, because understanding the environment in which financial reporting takes place facilitates the evaluation of information provided by firms in published financial statements.

Accounting: Accounting for Financial Analysis
Study the use of accounting information for internal decision-making and control purposes as opposed to the external disclosure focus of the financial accounting course. Integrate accounting principles with ideas from microeconomics, data analysis, decision analysis, finance, and operations management. The topical coverage of the course emphasizes the design of management accounting systems for analyzing costs in the context of the firm's business model, and the use of managerial accounting data in planning and controlling operations.

Accounting: Analysis and Valuation
Focus on financial analysis of a firm and on valuation of its shares. Analyze and interpret financial statements, with exposure to publicly available sources of financial information used in capital markets. Develop important Excel modeling skills pertaining to financial planning, analysis, and valuation. Build on your prior coursework in financial accounting, strategy, managerial accounting, investments, and corporate finance. Evaluate the financial implications of a firm's articulated strategy and use that information to project the firm's financial statements several years into the future by applying various valuation techniques to determine the forecasted or target prices of the firm's shares.

Decision Sciences: Quantitative Business Analysis
Quantitative Business Analysis provides an introduction to the analytical foundations of decision making. It deals with topics that are important when structuring decision problems, when analyzing them, and when deciding. The course begins with an introduction to probability, random variables and their properties. Two special random variables, the binomial and the normal, are analyzed since they are used extensively in practical applications. These topics serve as the basis for examining how to use sample data to make informed decisions about entire populations, both with point estimates and with confidence intervals. The course then provides an overview of regression analysis as a way of finding associations between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables, for improved understanding and/or for prediction purposes. The course concludes with an examination of the use of functions to describe business problems and with the use of optimization as a way to find best solutions.

Decision Sciences: Spreadsheet Modeling and Decision Analysis
Successful management requires the ability to recognize a decision situation, understand its essential features, and make a smart choice; however in the business world the stakes may be too high to learn by experience. Use decision models-simplified representations of situations involving uncertainty and/or complex interactions to help you gain the necessary skills to make the best decision. Discover several commonly used modeling tools (decision trees, Monte Carlo simulation, and optimization) and learn the art of modeling in a Microsoft Excel environment.

Economics: Fundamentals of Business Economics
Learn the fundamentals of supply and demand analysis, which is the basic tool for analyzing and understanding competition and the market determination of prices and quantities. Study the ideologies surrounding consumer choices and production and cost theory. Develop the tools for market structure analysis and apply them to monopoly and oligopoly markets as well as to price discrimination. Game theory tools are developed and applied to analyze strategic interactions.

Finance: Foundations of Capital Markets
Explore the fundamental principles of asset valuation, investments, and investment management. Topics include time value of money and discounting, diversification and risk, arbitrage and hedging, asset allocation, asset pricing models (including the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), factor models, and consumption based asset pricing), active portfolio management, performance evaluation, and the interaction between capital markets and the macro economy.

Finance: Advanced Corporate Finance
This course explores the financing and investment decisions of corporations across the world.  Topics include distribution policy including dividends and share repurchases, equity and debt issuance, corporate financing decisions and asset bubbles, listing decisions, warrants and convertibles, real options, multinational project evaluation and country and currency risk, financing large projects, project and infrastructure  finance, Islamic finance,  and corporate risk management.  Regional focus includes multinational project evaluation and country and currency risk, Islamic finance, infrastructure and project finance.  Some of the cases will be set in the relevant region.

Finance: Derivatives
Derivatives such as futures, forwards, swaps and options are financial contracts that derive their value from some basic underlying objects, for example, the value of an asset, the price of a commodity, or the performance of a company, etc. Derivatives have become a popular investment tool over the last three decades. Many companies routinely use derivatives to hedge risks and to compensate employees. Moreover, since many financial transactions and investment decisions today contain some derivative-like features, the materials covered in this course should be useful to students planning a career in asset management, corporate finance, investment banking, sales and trading, financial consulting or any other fields that involve financial decision making. This course is designed to achieve two main objectives. The first is to provide students with a framework to understand the fundamental concepts and to develop the necessary skills used in valuing derivative contracts. The second is to apply this framework to understand a wide variety of issues related to risk management and investment decisions.

Management: Foundations of Management and Organizations
In this course you'll learn to be an effective leader and manager of others, whatever your level in the organization. You'll examine practices that make teams more efficient and adaptable, and that help harness diversity and enhance innovation. Study the theory and practice of negotiation and get tools to improve your personal contribution to your team and firm. Discover how to lead others to respect and listen to your views and opinions. Much of the content of the course will be put to use in learning teams as you move through the program.

Marketing; Introduction to Marketing Analysis
Learn the principles, processes, and tools necessary to analyze markets and design optimal marketing programs. Assess marketing opportunities by analyzing the 3C's-customers, competitors, and your own company. Design effective marketing programs by selecting appropriate strategies for pricing, promotion, place, and product, also known as the 4 P's.  Modern marketing philosophy holds that only those firms that provide high customer value can succeed in the long run. During this course, learn how to create that value.

Operations: Introduction to Operations and Supply Chain Management
Study the basic facts and principles of supply chain processes and activities, from the extraction of raw materials, through transportation and processing, to the delivery of finished products to the customer. These activities typically involve numerous geographic locations and firms with different objectives. The crucial decisions include infrastructure investments, the quantities to produce and ship, the timing of shipments, where to hold inventories, and which firms should be responsible for which activities. The management of supply chains is difficult and complicated, but essential in the modern economy.

Strategy: Principals of Strategy
Identify business opportunities in dynamic competitive environments and, in turn, develop the skills necessary to be an effective strategy analyst as part of any business position. Tackle the complexity of analyzing competition in this era of globalization and changing firm boundaries, and assess strategy under increasing uncertainty. Develop strategic thinking by learning the concepts, models, and tools of strategic analysis and apply them to competitive situations. Develop the capability to assess a firm's strategic position with respect to rivals, the larger industry, and customers, given the firm's internal resources and capabilities.

The MMS: Finance program is challenging, rigorous and highly selective.  Prospective students are expected to possess outstanding intellectual abilities, strong academic credentials and have proven leadership qualities demonstrated during their undergraduate program and through professional activities.  Many courses require that students work in teams, so it’s imperative that applicants possess excellent interpersonal skills.

To be eligible for admission, applicants must have earned a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university with no specific major being preferable to any other. If the applicant has already received an MBA, its equivalent or an applied master’s degree in business (from an institution located in the U.S. or abroad) they are not eligible for admission to the MMS: Finance program.

Admitted students are required to read and sign the Fuqua Honor Code and their signature is evidence that they are willing to abide by the Code and its bylaws. All applicants will also be interviewed for proficiency in English.

Application Deadlines
January 20, 2012 - Round 1
March 1, 2012 - Final Deadline (applications will be considered on a space available basis after this date)

Admissions Process

Admissions will be handled through Fuqua's Office of Admissions, with decisions made solely by that office. The MMS: Finance program is part-time and does not offer career services or give out any scholarships, financial aid or student loans. 

The full application packet must contain each of the following to be considered complete.

• Application
• Resume
• Official transcripts with degree awarded and date conferred
• Essays
• Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) or Graduate Record Examination (GRE)
• Two Letters of Recommendation
• A letter of Support From Your Present Employer
• Interview (interviews will be scheduled upon invitation only, following review of application)
• English Language Proficiency Test Score if applicable (TOEFL, IELTS, or PTE)*

*If you did not earn an undergraduate degree from a school in which the primary language of instruction is English, you must have a valid TOEFL, IELTS or PTE score directly submitted to the admissions office. The language proficiency requirement is waived for international applicants holding non-technical master's degrees or non-technical doctorates from colleges or universities where the primary language of instruction is English.