Sustainable Finance

This exciting module is an introduction to the world of postgraduate study for all of our students. This module brings together students that will have a wide range of prior educational and professional experiences. The focus of this module will be on demonstrating how we can convert this wide range of experiences into the tools and capabilities needed to successfully engage in this postgraduate qualification. As such, it will encourage critical thinking and writing through a range of learning and teaching approaches. At the end of this module, all students, regardless of their prior academic experiences, should feel more confident in their ability to engage with a postgraduate qualification.

Expectations around how companies both raise capital and secure investment are rapidly changing. For many organisations, stakeholder pressure is resulting in a rethink of how risk and reward are captured. There is also increasing pressure to present themselves as more ‘ethical’ organisations, as captured through metrics such as ‘B Corp’ status and corporate knights rankings. This module critically evaluates our traditional approach to capturing risk and explores an alternative approach to the financing and investment cycle. In particular, concepts such as the sustainability challenges corporates face, ‘impact investing’, green bonds and CAT bonds will be considered.

This module explores the fundamental role of financial awareness for strategic decision making in an organisation. When large companies like Apple, Alibaba or Nike make announcements about new products, services or expansions, consumers and the markets tend to get very excited. However, as financial experts, we tend to be more focused on how these companies intend to fund such activity. This module will help you to better understand the background to such decisions. It will investigate the competing demands of stakeholders (such as investors, lenders and customers) and demonstrate how decisions are made in relation to strategic financial management.

This module provides students with a thorough, pluralistic understanding of the issues surrounding sustainability and sustainable development and climate change and how it affects business. Lecture sessions revolve around the topics of sustainability, sustainable development and climate change – what they are and why they matter. 

It has been contended that Fintech has the capacity to both help and hinder progress toward sustainable development. The aim of this module is to build an understanding of how Fintech interrelates with sustainable development. This will include a critical evaluation of the contrasting perspectives on the role it plays; from those that argue it supports financial inclusion to those that challenge the carbon positive contribution of Fintech.

Organisations are facing more and more scrutiny regarding their engagement with their environmental footprint. The aim of this module is to explore how you can transform your environmental reporting practices so that Carbon (Greenhouse Gas) reporting is comprehensively measured, reported, and embedded within your broader Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) analysis.

Environmental Economics captures the economic and financial impacts of global environmental policies. As such, this module aims to explore how to approach environmental concerns utilising sound economic theories. This will allow to explore questions regarding the environmental consequences of infinite growth and the likely impact of policies on sustainable development.

The evolving role of governance has been discussed at length by the media, governments and academics for decades now. Yet, regardless of how many updates to regulations are made or additional guidance on best practices are introduced, it seems that there is always a new governance scandal on the horizon.

Adopting a critical and topical perspective, this module will evaluate corporate governance and in particular the importance of risk management, internal control and ethical considerations in corporate governance. It will further examine how such financial scandals can be highlighted or investigated through forensic accounting and fraud investigations. Given the wealth of current activity in this area, the module blends a significant amount of theory and contextual examples to give you a well-rounded understanding of the topic area.

In this module, students are expected to identify, structure, frame and investigate a complex managerial or business issue and produce a substantial written document of their achievements and conclusions. This project is split into two different assessment points to allow for targeted activity and feedback to be utilised in specific timeframes.

This module presents a particularly exciting opportunity for students to engage in some independent research, with the support of a dedicated supervisor. The chosen topic will be one that interests and challenges you. If you were intrigued by the social responsibility practices of organisations or fascinated by the dividend decisions made by top management teams, this is your chance to explore these areas in further detail. Perhaps you’ve figured out where you want to focus your graduate career and accordingly engage in some independent study related to that position. As you will be supported by a dedicated dissertation supervisor, you can run ideas and drafts past this person. You can also engage in a wide variety of workshops to support this independent study. But above all, you will be able to develop a whole range of skills that you should feel confident of when seeking future graduate positions.