Some of Professor Eckbo's course offerings are shown here.

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MBA 2nd year elective

This course debates corporate governance systems and practices around the world. We begin with the fundamentals of law and finance: how a country’s legal system affects cost of capital and financial development. We then move more specifically to conflict resolution between the various constituencies of the firm, including incentive alignment between owners (shareholders) and their representatives (board and management), and the need to protect fundamental shareholder rights. There is a growing recognition of the need for reforms that reduce shareholder costs of monitoring management. Proposed reforms include greater transparency in issues ranging from accounting standards to executive pay and to corporate social responsibility. There is also a strong movement, especially among pension- and hedge funds, to reform fundamental shareholder rights. Proposals include simplified board election processes, and enhanced opportunities for binding shareholder resolutions at the general meeting. Collectively, these proposals radically alter the balance of power between shareholders and corporate insiders. Corporate insiders often resist reforms that bring shareholders “too close” to the firm’s decision making processes. The course brings out this controversy through a combination of lectures, academic readings and in-class debate with industry leaders.

MBA 2nd year elective

This course addresses important empirical regularities in corporate finance, governance and control. The course readings survey large-sample empirical research, occasionally using cases as an illustrative backdrop. We start with takeovers and corporate control transactions, debating evidence on optimal bidding strategies and on the conflicts of interests underlying attempts by target managements to eliminate unwanted (hostile) bids. We then address the effect of information asymmetries on firms’ capital structure choice and on various mechanisms for raising capital. Do corporate insiders time security issuances, and what is done to deal with the potential for such timing? Why do we see substantial underpricing of initial public offerings of stock (IPOs) and how is it possible to minimize this particular issuance cost? What does the emerging “behavioral” finance field have to say about these and other corporate finance issues? Third, the course discusses the design of optimal bankrupt procedures and empirical evidence on issues such as fire-sales and conflicts of interests in bankruptcy. Finally, given the central role of managerial incentives in corporate finance, we debate the executive compensation controversy, including shareholder demands for “say on pay” and other types of engagements.

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Part-time MBA Course

This intensive 3-day course covers central topics in corporate finance. It starts with the use of options pricing techniques to value flexibility in the firm's investment projects, and to value risky debt when total firm value is known. It continues with a review of classical capital structure theory (the trade-off between tax benefits and bankruptcy costs), and debates the effects of alternative bankruptcy systems on the expected cost of default. The discussion of capital structure choice also covers optimal security design, ex planing the use of complex debt covenants. Next, the course covers investment banking and the capital acquisition process. We examine the cost-effective solutions to external financing problems, and we review recent large-sample evidence on IPO Underpricing and the long-run performance of security issues. The course ends with corporate finance issues in the context of M&As and corporate restructurings

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Executive MBA Course

This intensive seven-day course exposes participants to key issues in corporate finance and restructurings, as well as to the ongoing debate over corporate governance and investor protection. These issues are particularly relevant for executives, directors, and policy makers in both the financial and industrial sector. We provide practical tools for financial decisions and valuation, and participants are exposed to financial and strategic issues surrounding corporate restructuring techniques, IPOs, and takeovers. The course is highly intensive, with daily workloads of 8-9 hours. Each day consists of a mix of lecturing, case discussions, and case preparations in groups. As much as possible, groups are formed to obtain a mix of individuals with different expertise. Case assignments include valuation exercises as well as discussions of strategic and financial issues. A workshop is provided to refresh and explain basic valuation techniques needed for case solving.

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Part-time MBA Course

This intensive 3-day course covers topics including market efficiency, basic theory of portfolio selection, mean-variance efficient portfolios, capital asset pricing (two-fund) theory, arbitrage pricing theory (multifactor pricing), empirical identification of pervasive risk factors, fund performance evaluation, and basic market micro-structure issues. The format is a combination of lecture notes, examples, discussion of journal articles, and exercise of factor analysis using real-world time series. Performance evaluation is illustrated using portfolios of IPO stocks, insiders' stock holdings, and mutual funds.

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Part II surveys important empirical regularities in corporate finance. There are five main themes:

• Performance econometrics: event study techniques and portfolio performance evaluation procedures used to infer valuation impacts of corporate actions.
• Raising capital:  how transaction costs and asymmetric information between the firm and outside investors affects firms’ ability to raise cash in public securities markets and issuers’ choice of flotation method in both seasoned (SEO) and initial (IPO) public offerings of equity.
• Capital structure and bankruptcy: how the structure of financial securities helps reduce agency costs and resolving managerial incentives to over- or under-invest, and a comparison of auctions and negotiations in bankruptcy.
• Corporate takeovers: valuation effects of takeover activity, sources of takeover gains, and empirical investigations of optimal bidding theories for competition preemption, the payment method (cash versus stock), and bidder toeholds in the target.
• Corporate Governance: evolution of governance systems around the world, the role of the board and board election procedures, executive compensation, the return to shareholder activism and governance investing.