BSc Accounting & Finance

This module will facilitate students in developing an entrepreneurial mindset, attitude and skills through a combination of lectures, case study and creativity exercise sessions. Learn the practical steps needed to establish a new business venture and enable valuable creation.

Understand the business responses of global firms to the features and influences of the business environment. Appreciate the importance and impact of political, economic, social and cultural factors. Read, analyse, and compare different theoretical perspectives on globalisation, convergence and varieties of capitalism, strategic management, and the role and influence of multinational corporations in both the developed world and in developing countries.

Providing you with an understanding of some of the major theories of accounting, the regulatory environment for financial reporting, the techniques underlying current reporting practice. It will also enable you to prepare, read, critically evaluate and interpret financial statements, assess profit performance and understand the information requirements of investors.

Building on Financial Reporting 1, this module aims to develop your understanding of the theories of accounting, the regulatory environment for financial reporting, corporate governance, the structure of group accounts and models of asset valuation; and to develop your ability to prepare, read, critically evaluate and interpret published annual reports in the light of the information requirements of the various stakeholder groups in the business.

You will learn how to use quantitative tools for pricing stocks, bonds and derivatives, and for measuring risk and return. You will develop a sound understanding of the main theories and models for valuing financial market instruments, and will become aware of key empirical tests of asset valuation models and their implications.

In your second year, you will begin to shape your degree by choosing three accounting or finance elective modules, allowing you to continue to focus your studies around accounting or finance or a mixture of both. Examples of the modules that you could choose from are shown below: 

Issues in Management Accounting 

The module builds on core concepts introduced in Year 1 and will further your understanding of how accounting is used within organisations for the planning, control and evaluation of activity with a special focus on the manager's role.  The module covers technical issues in cost management and performance measurement systems, and wider issues concerning the role of management accounting in shaping management structures and decisions in manufacturing and service contexts. 

Business Law 2 

Build upon your knowledge of contract law from Business Law 1, conduct independent research of set issues using a range of sources and work in teams to prepare and present reasoned arguments. Evaluate current law and reform proposals. 

Finance 2: Corporate Finance 

You will learn to critically assess the factors that determine the optimal investment, financing and pay out decisions of a firm. Compute the cost of capital of a firm under alternative assumptions. Use alternative methods for valuing firms to gain important insights into value drivers. Discuss the main motives for mergers and acquisitions. Identify the reasons why firms raise capital. Solve structured numerical problems and write informed critiques of important topics in Corporate Finance theory. 

Economics of Strategy 

Understand fundamental concepts in micro and macroeconomics, as relevant for the study of strategic decisions of firms. Develop a range of appropriate analytical skills, including descriptive, graphical and elementary mathematical methods used in the economic analysis of strategy. Develop your capacity to apply analytical techniques to real world business problems and strategy choices. 

This module will present you with a range of contemporary business-related issues and problems in the management of modern organisations with a particular focus on situations which are relatively unstructured and where there is no "one right answer". You will work in syndicate groups to deliver presentations or critically discuss the presentations of other groups.

In your final year you can really shape your degree by choosing four accounting or finance elective modules, allowing you to continue to focus your studies around accounting or finance or a mixture of both.

In your final year you will choose three elective modules from a range of subject areas such as: marketing, strategy, entrepreneurship, human resources, customer service management, industrial relations, law as well as accounting and finance. Alternatively you can choose from modules offered through other University departments such as Economics or a language.