Friday, 28 September 2007 10:02

Departmento de Administração de Empresas

Schedule: Fridays, as listed in the course outline.
Prof. António Marques-Mendes
Office nr.: 417. Tel +351-239-790-548; Fax +351-239-790-413
Web site   http://www.marques-mendes.com • E-mail student@marques-mendes.com

Lectures and seminars take place in Room PC2

Tutorials and appointments are available by prior booking through email

Goals

Students taking this elective course should expect to learn the nature and purposes of financial investments in an international context. They will gain skills in investing techniques and in risk management, including trading aspects. They will learn, through hands-on case studies and portfolio management, how to judge the risk of stocks from an investor's perspective, and how to create and manage investment positions. In the end, the goal is to apply state-of-the-art techniques to stock market investing and risk management decisions.

Instructor

Marques Mendes has taught international finance at FEUC - University of Coimbra, in Portugal, and in more than 10 countries abroad for the past two decades. Currently, he is Associate Professor of International Finance at the School of Economics at the University of Coimbra (FEUC). He is also the founder of Marques Mendes & Associados Ltd, a consultancy on investment and wealth management. Previously (1992-98), he was a Senior Banker and Head of Unit at the EBRD Banking Department in the City of London.  Before moving into banking, he was closely involved in European Union affairs having been an elected Member of the Portuguese and the European Parliaments in 1985-87 and a national expert with the European Commission in 1991.  He began his post-university career in the mid 1970s as a trainee in cost accounting at a major multinational company in Finland (Upm Kymmene), after which he returned to his home town (Covilhã) to teach at the local University. Details on Marques Mendes' current research interests and availability to supervise MBA and PhD thesis can be found in his personal web page.

Pedagogy

The course employs cases and problems as well as classroom lectures and discussions. We will make use of international as well as domestic examples. Written assignments will be due for most sessions. Some will be prepared individually and some in group. Each student will be expected to participate actively in class discussions. There will be a final exam.

The Course on the Internet

We will make use of the Internet--notably the World Wide Web--for resource material and communication. Indeed this course outline itself will change: the definitive version is the Web site at http://www.marques-mendes.com/feuc/ifi/ . All students must have an email address and Web access. Your default address will be the one assigned by the Course Instructor. Lecture materials, as available, can be downloaded from the Web. (In some cases you will need the Adobe Acrobat reader, Version 3 or higher, available free from Adobe's World Wide Web Site http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html.). To access it, use alunoifi+student number (e.g. alunoifi01) as ID, and your 9-digit password (ask me) to get in.

To keep up with the world of international investment try the following Web sites:

• CNN Finance • The Financial Times • Yahoo Finance • Bloomberg • Reuters • MarketWatch

• and much more at Marques-Mendes's Finance Resources on the Web

Text and cases

Marques-Mendes, The education of a stock market investor ( mimeo, forthcoming);

Stephen Lofthouse, et al, Investment Management  (2001)

Students should have read the assignments before coming to class. Material covered in the assigned textbook readings will generally not be repeated in class. Rather, class time will be devoted to lecture and case discussion, applying the material covered in the readings.

Grading

• Class participation 20% 
• Cases/problems 50%
• Final examination 30%.