The Value of an Executive MBA for Finance Professionals
Wharton’s reputation in the finance world is unparalleled. Top faculty conduct cutting-edge research, establish best practices, and teach the finance leaders of tomorrow. Wharton students learn how to take on global financial challenges and opportunities through alternative investments, fintech, impact investing, financial inclusion, and more.
While Wharton does not offer a specific EMBA in finance, students can major in this area as well as take advantage of many finance-related electives. The executive format of Wharton’s EMBA program allows students to continue working without disrupting their careers, providing an ideal environment for finance and accounting professionals to gain new skills while accelerating their careers.
Finance EMBA Courses & Curriculum
First-year courses cover the core areas of business: leadership essentials, analytic foundations, and business foundations. Students take classes on topics such as corporate finance, fundamentals of financial and managerial accounting, and macroeconomics and the global economic environment.
In their second year, students choose from a large selection of electives to develop an area of expertise or a breadth of knowledge. Second-year students can take electives at both of our campuses in Philadelphia and San Francisco as well as global courses that focus on business issues in other parts of the world.
Examples of electives include:
Advanced Corporate Finance – Students study the major decision-making areas of managerial finance and financial theory. Areas of financial management covered include leasing, mergers and acquisitions, corporate reorganizations, financial planning, and working capital management.
Corporate Development: Mergers and Acquisitions – Students explore the various modes of corporate development available to managers to drive firm growth and change, including alliances, outsourcing, corporate venturing, and mergers and acquisitions.
Formation and Implementation of Entrepreneurial Ventures – This advanced course in entrepreneurship examines ways to profitably launch and exploit business opportunities. Students acquire the skills necessary for crafting a winning business model for ventures — developing and writing a coherent and effective plan to start a business, in either an independent or a corporate setting.
Financial Derivatives – Students learn the necessary skills to value and to employ options, futures, and related financial contracts.
International Corporate Finance – Students analyze financial problems corporations face that result from operating in an international environment. Major topics covered are corporate strategy and the decision to invest abroad, forecasting exchange rates, international portfolio diversification, managing exchange risk, taxation issues, cost of capital and financial structure in the multinational firm, and sources of financing.
Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation – Students learn the finance of technological innovation, with a focus on the valuation tools useful in the venture capital industry. These tools include the “venture capital method,” comparables analysis, discounted cash flow analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, contingent-claims analysis, decision trees, and real options.
What Can You Do in Finance With An Executive MBA?
There is no one set career path for finance and accounting professionals in Wharton’s EMBA program. Our students combine their years of professional experience with the knowledge, skills, and network they gain at Wharton to accelerate their careers or pursue new opportunities.
Alumni Stories
Edmund Reese, WG’14, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for U.S. Consumer Card Products, American Express
Katherine Tan, WG’19, Program Officer, Development Policy and Finance, Gates Foundation
Swati Chopra, WG’19, Director of Customer Success, McAfee
Chris Ficara, WG’18, Sr. VP and Wealth Management Advisor, Merrill Lynch
James Tang, WG’20, CFO, Medport
Jessica Ross, WG’15, Sr. VP of Finance in the Office of Transformation, Salesforce