SMNR: Modern Corporate Governance and Finance

• Semester: Spring 2021
• Course ID: 397S
• Credit Hours: 3
• Unique: 29750

Description

This course will be taught entirely online via Zoom.

Corporate governance and finance in the modern era, and the associated legal, regulatory, and public discourse involve a wide range of issues relating not only to individual business entities, but also to financial markets overall and society at large. This seminar will explore some of these issues. (No prior business or financial background is required for the seminar.) For example, due partly to the current Covid-19 crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis, the relationships among business entities, investors, and society at large are being reconsidered. As to these relationships, we look at questions such as what it truly means to run a corporation in the interests of shareholders, whether corporations should consider a broader range of interests (such as the welfare of employees and host communities), and how certain new investment products may affect the stability of the financial system. Real world and academic financial developments are important to understanding many of these matters. Such developments have also animated changes in the nature of shareholders and creditors and in the breadth of financial strategies they can use. These changes affect longstanding federal disclosure, state corporate law, and market-based governance mechanisms as well as established financial regulatory approaches. Students with no business or finance background can find many topics to write about in a thoughtful way. It is recommended (although not required) that students either have already taken or simultaneously take Business Associations or Business Associations (Enriched).