Hamid Boustanifar: “Our students will learn company valuation […] and how to set up optimal financing policies for a firm or an acquisition”

What is your research about?

I undertake research at the intersection of corporate finance, strategy, and valuation. Some of my current research focuses on the stock-market valuation of intangible capital, i.e human capital and brand equity; we have highlighted, for example, that the stock market undervalues these assets (1). I’m also applying textual analysis to construct otherwise difficult-to-measure firm-level attributes (such as business social irresponsibility) and to analyze their impacts on firm valuation (2). Another one of my research streams is about the effect of top management team’s personal preferences on determining firm policies such as internationalization or financing policies (3). And I’m also conducting some research on the intersection of financial and labor markets (4) as well as on personal bankruptcies (5).

How is the programme MSc in Corporate Finance & Banking you’re teaching in structured?

Students are provided with skills required to do financial analysis of companies, in multiple ways. In the first semester, they all take fundamental and core courses, and in the second semester they can start to choose electives - private equity, decentralized finance, financial analysis & accounting, textual analysis for finance and so on depending on their preferences.

What about your specific course?

In my course, we will cover advanced valuation techniques and best practices for valuing companies and details about initial public offerings (IPOs). We will study how firms should finance themselves (capital structure) and how firms should decide on their payout policy (the choice of dividends or repurchases), as well as the valuation and modelling of acquisitions. As we cover several different topics at an advanced level, students rely mostly on the extensive lecture notes I provide them, together with several case studies that we work on.

Everything student will learn in the course is applied to real cases and companies. For each topic we discuss in class, there is also a guest lecture (typically given by a team of investment bankers), in which the speakers discuss further practical details and business cases.

What skills do your students gain? What type of careers do you have in mind for them?

They learn company valuation (a necessary skill for almost all corporate finance-related jobs), to understand how equity capital markets work and the skills required to set up optimal financing policies for a firm or acquisition.

There are many careers possible for them: different departments within investment banking (ECM, DCM, M&A), equity research analyst, M&A specialist, private equity analyst, consultant… And they can rely on the solid expertise of EDHEC in terms of careers service, as noted in a recent FT ranking, where our school ranked 1st in France on this topic (6).

References

(1) "An alternative to shareholder capitalism? A review of Alex Edmans' “Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit” (2023). Boustanifar Hamid. Journal of International Management & Accounting. Volume 34, Issue 2, June 2023. Pages 378-383.

"Brand Value and Long-Run Stock Returns" (2022). Boustanifar Hamid, Dae Kang Young. Available at SSRN.

(2) "Measuring Business Social Irresponsibility: The Case of Sin Stocks" (2023). Boustanifar Hamid, Schwarz Patrick. Available at SSRN.

(3) "CEO wealth and cross-border acquisitions by SMEs" (2023). Zilja Flladina, Benito Gabriel R.G., Boustanifar Hamid, Zhang Dan. International Business Review. Volume 32, Issue 6, December 2023, 102192.

"Taking chances? The effect of CEO risk propensity on firms’ risky internationalization decisions" (2022). Boustanifar Hamid,, Zajac Edward, Zilja Flladina. Journal of International Business Studies, 53, 302–325.

(4) "Zero leverage puzzle: Do labour laws matter?" (2022). Hamid Boustanifar, Arnt Verriest. European Financial Management. Volume 29, Issue 4. September 2023. Pages 1119-1159

"Wages and Human Capital in Finance: International Evidence, 1970–2011" (2018). Hamid Boustanifar, Everett Grant, Ariell Reshef. Review of Finance, Volume 22, Issue 2, March 2018, Pages 699–745.

(5) "Hamid Boustanifar, winner of the best 2022 published paper award (AFFI)", July 2023 - edhec.edu.

"Bankruptcy Reform, Credit Availability, and Financial Distress" (2022). Boustanifar Hamid. Finance, vol. 43, no. 3, 2022, pp. 159-220.

(6) "Financial Times Master in Management 2023 rankings: EDHEC has moved up one place to 11th in the world", Sept. 2023 - edhec.edu