The course FIN 500 stands on 3 main pillars: The regular lecture, taught by Prof. Dr. Erik Theissen, will be offered as a non-live video stream. The same holds for the solution to the study questions (taught by Can Yilanci). The online streams allow students to watch those videos at their own pace. Once online, the videos will remain available until the end of the semester. A detailed plan will inform students about the exact dates on which the videos will be uploaded.

Prof. Theissen and Can Yilanci offer a weekly Q&A session (Tuesday 12:00 – 12:45) lagging the posting dates of lectures and exercise sessions by one week. This session will be live and via Zoom. It will not be recorded. It shall offer an opportunity to ask all those questions that one would have asked in a live lecture, or in Professor Theissen's or Can Yilanci's office hours. Questions may relate to the lecture itself, or to the study questions. The gap of one week between lecture and Q&A should be used to watch the lecture video and to consolidate any remaining questions. No new content will be conveyed in the Q&A sessions.

In the first week the slot of the weekly Q&A session will be extended to 90 minutes (i.e. 12:00 – 13:30) and used for two purposes. (1) Prof. Theissen will give a general overview of his course program in the MMM program (“Orientierungsveranstaltung”) and (2) he will introduce into the course FIN 500; in particular, he will explain the organizational details of the course and outline its contents.

The course is taught in English. All materials and the exam will be in English.

• Students should have successfully attended the courses Finanzwirtschaft I and II in the Mannheim Bachelor program (or similar courses at other institutions)
• Students should definitely be familiar with the material covered in Brealey, Myers and Allen: Principles of Corporate Finance, 10th edition, McGraw-Hill 2011: Chapters 7,8,9,13
• The course FIN500 also requires basic knowledge in mathematics (optimization (unconstrained and constrained), elementary matrix algebra) and statistics (expected value, variance, covariance, correlation, t-tests)