Wirtschaftsprüfung

This module focuses on the basic concepts underlying financial statements and on the terminology and methods that allow the students to prepare, interpret, analyze, and evaluate corporate financial statements.

Students will acquire fundamental accounting skills for a management or other roles such as financial analyst. Students will gain an understanding of how financial statements are prepared and develop the skills to prepare financial statements. Students will be able to analyze corporate annual reports and to make investment decisions.

This module introduces students to the economic function of capital markets. The first part of the module covers firms’ investment decisions. Students will learn how to value cash flows that accrue in the future and to calculate returns correctly. The latter part of the module deals with the cost of financing. It introduces students to the concept of market efficiency and portfolio theory. Students will learn how to derive the cost of debt and equity financing and how to use this information to determine the firm value.

This module covers the general contents of the education in mathematics taught in undergraduate business administration courses. Its primary objective is to provide students with those methods that are necessary to address quantitative questions in economics. Starting with essential fundamentals on mathematical deduction the module introduces the basic concepts on sequences and their key properties. This directly leads over to the analysis of real valued functions and their wide field of applications in economics.

The module integrates microeconomics with decision theory. After completing the module students are capable of analyzing decisions under different circumstances, and to discuss these decisions both from an empirical and from a normative perspective. They learn to distinguish accurately between decisions under certainty, uncertainty and risk, and they are fully aware of the difference to game theoretical situations. This enables students to analyze likely outcomes in different market structures such as perfect competition, oligopoly, monopoly and natural monopoly. Subsequently, students can apply their knowledge to regulatory debates on different topics such as environmental policy or the health sector.

This module is an introduction to IT for business. Students will learn about the technical functioning of information and communication systems, followed by a discussion of business application systems. The focus is on integration, ERP systems, management of business architecture and business process modeling. The final part of the module gives an introduction to relational databases and the creation of applications using Excel and VBA.

This module deals with financial products. Both traditional bonds and equities and derivatives (from interest rate swaps to options) are treated. Mathematical evaluation methods and the practices and methods of markets for financial products are analyzed. All products are calculated and discussed in detail. Students will learn to evaluate the significance of financial markets means and to understand important products of international financial markets.

Cost accounting provides cost and revenue information to support various managerial decisions within firms. The module introduces traditional and advanced costing approaches, including cost classification, absorption costing, direct costing, activity-based costing, target costing, and budgeting.

This module introduces students to key parts of German Civil law and procedural law as an introduction to law.

The objective of the course is to give the students the basic understanding of legal matters.

This module is an introduction to descriptive statistics, probability theory and inferential statistics including hypothesis testing with applications to economics and business. Descriptive statistics covers the examination of observed data. Key concepts are characteristic figures of samples like different kind of means, measures of variation, empirical distribution functions and their graphical representation. Of particular importance are measures for the dependency of several characteristics and the distinction between correlation and causality. Probability theory introduces the concepts of probability spaces, random variables and their theoretical distributions. They serve as a mathematical model to describe processes that are driven by coincidental input.

The module consists of two separate parts. The first one is, which is summarized under the title “Markets and Incentives”, draws on the content of the course Microeconomics I. It provides a short refresher in game theory and then explains the problem of oligopoly in detail. It introduces the notion of market power by many firms, how competition plays out in static and dynamic environments, how firms can collude and cartelize the market, and demonstrates that unregulated markets do not lead to an efficient outcome in this case. It also introduces asymmetric information, such moral hazard and adverse selection, in markets, which will allow students understand the problems of these ubiquitous phenomena in detail and also the resulting institutions to deal with them. Finally, the course considers the interaction between markets for different goods and introduces the concept of general equilibrium. The second part on “Ethical Management” …

This module introduces students to essential macroeconomic models and concepts for closed and open economies like the AD/AS-, the IS-LM-, and the Mundell-Fleming model. A special focus is given to macroeconomic policy, especially monetary policy. In this context the two most prominent theories of money – the quantity and the liquidity preference theory – are introduced as well as the so-called Phillips-curve discussion as a modern theory of inflation and a policy trade-off between inflation and unemployment. The theoretical know-how is finally applied by analyzing and discussing the respective monetary policy of the ECB. The course starts with an introduction of the most important measures of the macroeconomy: the gross domestic product (GDP), the price level and the inflation rate as well as the current and the capital account.

Economic theory assumes that on efficient markets prices adjust to match supply with demand: if there is excess demand, prices rise; if there is excess supply, prices fall. However, most managers in most enterprises would prefer to be able to match supply and demand without adjusting prices. To them excess demand means lost revenue and excess supply a waste of resources. They do not like the thought that an overproduction of the product that they are responsible for has to be scrapped or sold at discount prices. This course is about how companies can design their operations to better match supply with demand and thereby gain a significant competitive advantage over its rivals.

This module deals with research methodology from an applied perspective. Today’s business environment is driven by empirical evidence of both quantitative and qualitative nature. Having the right methodological skills and competencies is therefore crucial not just for a career in academia, but for everyone faced with business decisions. The module is divided into two parts.

This module focuses on the practical and conceptual problems associated with financial management of the non-financial corporation. The treatment of all areas involves theoretical concepts and the application of these concepts to contemporary business situations for the purpose of corporate decision-making. All topics reflect the impact on the overall value and risk of the company. Topics covered include, but are not limited to: Financial statements and cash flow, time value of money, valuation of debt and equity, capital budgeting and project evaluation techniques.

The aim of the module is to provide students with insights into business strategy, basic structures of firms and  how they affect the behavior of firm employees. In addition, students develop insights into why continuous development of both strategy and organizations is essential and how management and staff can achieve both. Students are also encouraged to develop their own ideas concerning the range of conceptual tasks within a business.

This module consists of four parts:

1. *Marketing effectiveness*

2. *Strategic marketing and customer management*

3. *Brand management*

4. *International marketing*

This module introduces students to the financial system with a focus on banking, other financial institutions and financial markets. It provides a solid understanding of the functioning of the different types of financial markets and financial institutions. It deals with the role of financial institutions, in particular commercial and investments banks, and their interaction with financial markets.

Furthermore, this module provides students with some basic concepts in banks' risk management and discusses the role of the State in regulating banks in particular and the financial sector in general.

Accounting is one of the rare sources of company-specific financial information publicly available to external stakeholders such as debt and equity investors. International standard setters such as the IASB therefore increasingly focus on the decision usefulness of accounting information for these groups of users.

The module will provide students with relevant theoretical and practical knowledge for careers in accounting, auditing or financial analysis. Class sessions will combine traditional and interactive lectures with exercises, case studies and group projects.

Students are introduced to different business models within and across industries. Significant accounting methods and challenges for different industries are reviewed, taking into account differences in the business models of firms. We will discuss different management accounting systems and their appropriateness for different industries. We will then talk about general and industry-specific regulation. In the following, we talk about ethical and environmental issues and how financial statements inform about what is sometimes called corporate citizenship. We will proceed with discussing how firms account for the profitability of their investments and how this is reflected in financial reports.