Intensive Course on Applied Corporate Finance under the Project Economic Education in Bulgaria 2030

An intensive course on Applied Corporate Finance was held at the UNWE for students and lecturers from our university. The event was part of the project BGO5M2OP001-2.016-0004-CO1 - Economic Education in Bulgaria 2030 with guest lecturer Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alberto Burchi from the University of Perugia.

At the beginning of the course the lecturer presented the book Principles of Corporate Finance by Franklin Allen, Richard A. Brealey, Stewart C. Myers, pointing out that it describes the theory and practice of corporate finance and will be very useful for all those who study and work in this field.

In his presentation Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alberto Burchi introduced the students to the basic principles of corporate finance, pointing out case studies. He emphasized that the corporate finance essentially deals with the capital investment and financing decisions of a corporation that are relevant to the growth of the performance of the enterprise. It includes both short-term and long-term financial planning which involves developing and implementing specific strategies designed for this purpose. These financial decisions typically include investment decisions, where and how much a firm should invest, financing decisions, how to raise the funds needed to make the necessary capital investments while carefully monitoring the debt-equity ratio, and dividend decisions, which are related to returning the benefits of investments to shareholders.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alberto Burchi

The lecturer introduced the concepts of the different time value of money and the relation between the risk and return on investment, the scientific methods and models for the investment valuation of capital assets according to their risk and return, the tools for investing, raising capital and protecting against financial losses. The students actively participated and asked questions on the topic and the presented case studies which turned the event into a fruitful discussion.

The project BG05M2OP001-2.016-0004-SO1 - Economic Education in Bulgaria 2030 is funded under the Operational Programme on Science and Education for Smart Growth 2014-2020, under the procedure Modernization of Higher Education Institutions. The project is worth BGN 5 million. The UNWE should modify its training, respectively the curricula in Economics and Management, in a way that allows them to be similar to programmes in European universities and applicable in modern business conditions. The updating and modernization will be done in partnership with other leading regional universities such as the D. А. Tsenov - Svishtov, Burgas Free University, National Sports Academy and KRIB. Through this cooperation, up-to-date curricula based on digitalization will be created and put into practice. 9 digital classrooms and 3 digital laboratories which are an indispensable addition to the modern learning process, will be put into operation. It will enable the sharing of resources, including know-how between the partner universities and/or between the students and their university lecturers and mentors to be maximized.

The project relies on the inclusion of a large part of the lecturers involved in its implementation in the programmes for further training and/or short-term specialization at the foreign partners as the share of young scientists should be at least 15 percent. It is planned to implement 15 joint programmes with partner Bulgarian higher education institutions and to introduce 7 new programmes with digital educational content, including distance learning. 2 educational programmes in a foreign language will be introduced in cooperation with foreign universities and scientific organizations.

The project will provide support for students to develop entrepreneurial skills and digital creativity. The project will be implemented for 30 months, and all of the above will contribute to the improvement of the quality of education in Economics at UNWE and in Bulgaria as well as to the improvement of the quality of research at UNWE and other partner universities.