News

5/06
I have not decided whether to emphasize the last part of the course on the final. Don't ask me, I won't tell. Also, please note that an old exam is in the book itself. I do not have the exam from last year afaik.
5/05
Schedule from Tai-Sen:
 
Extra Office Hours: Please contact with TA for appointment.
 
Review Session: Date&Time: May 6 (Tue) 7-830pm Place: Wilson 102
 
Regular Final Exam: Date&Time: May 8 (Thur) 9am Place: LIST 120
 
Regular Final Exam(for people with DSS form): Date&Time: May 8 (Thur) 9am Place: Wilson 103
 
Makeup Final Exam: Date&Time: May 15 (Thur) 9am Place: LIST 120
 
Makeup Final Exam (for people with DSS forms and special permissions): Date&Time: May 15 (Thur) 9am Place: Wilson 105

There will be no other makeup final.  If you cannot make it on May 15, then
you will have to take your makeup exam with next fall's class.

5/01
Doug's presentation slides: BrownFinanceClass.
4/19
Doug Wilburne will hold a 1.5 hour talk and Q&A session about Textron on May 1, 2008 at 1pm. At least one member of each group must attend. Information from the session is fair game for the both the project and the final. However, you need not prepare for this class session. Please send me an email a few days in advance if you want to join for potential lunch with Doug from noon to 1pm. More information about Doug:

Douglas R. Wilburne

Vice President Investor Relations

Douglas Wilburne was appointed vice president, investor relations and a Textron corporate officer in April 2000. His responsibilities include communicating Textron's strategy and financial performance to investment and business communities worldwide, including Wall Street analysts, institutional investors and business/financial media. In addition, he serves on Textron's enterprise-wide Finance Council.

Prior to joining Textron, he headed Rite Aid Corporation's first formal investor relations program as that company managed its way through a financial reporting and management credibility crisis. From 1997 to 1999, Wilburne headed investor relations for AMP Incorporated, where he led the company's global investor relations program and guided the company through its merger with Tyco International. The first 20 years of his career were spent at Bell Atlantic Corporation, where he held numerous positions of increasing responsibility in engineering, operations, regulatory and finance. He served as Bell Atlantic's director of investor relations beginning in 1996.

Wilburne completed the Leadership at the Peak program at the Center for Creative Leadership and Textron's Global Leadership Forum at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst, a member of the Providence Society of Financial Analysts, the Boston chapter of the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) and has just begun service as a member of the parent board of NIRI.

Wilburne earned a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Pennsylvania State University, where he was a member of Eta Kappa Nu, the national electrical engineering honor society, and an M.B.A. in Finance from Drexel University, where he was a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, the national business administration honor society. Wilburne is a life-member of the Fame Volunteer Fire Company, No. 2 in Lewistown, PA.

3/22
To gain access to the Lehman system, please send an email to mhotarek at lehman.com from your Brown email account. State that you are a student in my course, your year of graduation, and a short statement that says that you will use their account only for educational, non-commercial purposes. (The Lehman system may help you for the final project, but it is a lot more, too. It would not be a bad idea for you to learn it.) Meredith Hotarek will arrange the rest.
4/1
I am planning to hire 5-10 students for summer work (scanning). The pay will be around $1,500-$2,000 per month for full-time work; the work is tedious, piecework, but not difficult. You can listen to your ipod while doing it. if interested, please send me an email to get more information. I will then send you a secret link to a longer description. I plan to collect applications for about 2 weeks, and then decide by the end of the month who to hire.

Econ 1720: Corporate Finance

Econ 1710 (investments) is highly recommended as a prerequisite for the course. If you have not taken Econ 1710, it will be difficult for you to make up this deficit. You should then read the course textbook back-to-back in advance of the course, and use the saved time during the course to catch up with the investments aspects of the course.

The preliminary syllabus is syllabus1720.pdf. (A bad html translation thereof is in syllabus1720.html.)

The classnotes, which you should print out and bring to class.

The link to the book is http://books.lulu.com/content/1756518.

The TA website is http://www.econ.brown.edu/students/Tai-Sen_he/Corporate%20Finance/index.htm. 2/1/08: Jonathan Ford's office hours are now 9:30am-10:30am, not in the afternoon.

Slightly Late Homeworks

For your convenience, we shall allow you to hand in homeworks until 4:30pm of the due date. You must deposit such into Tai-Sen's mailbox in the basement of Robinson. You cannot hand such homeworks into my mailbox. I often do not check my mailbox, and by the time I may find one handed into my mailbox, it is usually too late, and it would be unfair to other students. So, my secretary has instructions to discard all homeworks handed into my mailbox.

Enrollment Rules

Let me explain my dilemma. There are about 100 students in the 1pm section, and only about 70 students in the 2:30pm section. On the one hand, I do not want exclude all the 2:30pm students from potential enrollment in econ 1759 next semester (or from graduating on time). On the other hand, I need to balance the sections better. We do not have 100 chairs in the room, either.

So if you are enrolled in the 1pm section, and you want to switch to the 2:30pm section, you would be doing me a favor. Please let me know if you can make such a switch. We have many more open spaces in the later section, which will make this a better class than the overcrowded earlier section.

There are two reasons and two reasons only that will allow you into the 1:00 pm section at this point:

  1. you need to take csci 0040 to be able to take econ 1759 before you graduate (which will be next fall). the proviso is that I will not give you a grade in my course at the end of the semester, unless you also get a grade in csci 0040.
  2. you have other course conflicts that would prevent you from graduating on-time if you cannot take the 1:00pm section. Note that if you can take econ 1720 next fall, you should drop econ 1720 this semester and take it next fall instead.

Non-registered students: your task is to complete the homeworks (the end of chapter problems) for the first 5 chapters by Monday, Feb 4 (I just extended it). You also will get signed into the 2:30 section. (If you are registered in the 2:30pm class already, and are just switching to the 1:00pm class under this condition, then the 5-chapter homework requirement does not apply to you.)

Book Errata

The list of errata to the book version 0.9.1.c is kept at errata091c.txt. It may not be complete. If you have doubts about something, you can also check the latest versions on my website, which should have the most recent errata fixed.

First Midterm Exam

Really old notes

2/15:
Jonathan Ford is holding office hours today (Friday), 2-4pm. Charles Buaron is planning to hold office hours on Monday.
2/14:
I have improved the slides (from both chapter 5 and 6) from the 2/12 lecture. They are clearer and correct my variance calculation errors. Feel free to look at them.