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The Financial Engineering Laboratory provides 7 undergraduate courses to the School of Production Engineering and Management, as well as to other Schools of the Technical University of Crete. In addition, the Laboratory provides 6 postgraduate courses to the postgraduate program on Business Administration of the School of Production Engineering and Management. 

Over the years, more than 320 diploma theses and 160 postgraduate theses have been completed at the Laboratory.

Undergraduate courses

The operation of a firm and its goals. The evolution of financial management. Credit system. Basic financial statements: Balance sheet, net income statement. Working capital. Financial ratios. Financial analysis methodologies. Profitability. Financial leverage. Industrial and financial risks. Break-even point analysis. Sources and uses of funds. Financial forecasting methods. Corporate financing: self-financing, share capital increases, loans, leasing. Case studies.

Financial Mathematics. Time value of money. Capitalization. Annuities. Investment decision under certainty. Overview of the investment evaluation criteria. Investment decision under uncertainty. Uncertainty and risk. Investment decision under indefinite future. Investment decision under probabilities. Risk and Return of a portfolio. Portfolio selection and management; market model, capital asset pricing model. Case studies.

Modeling of linear programming (LP) problems. The geometry of LP. The Simplex method: theory and the tableau implementation. Duality theory. The dual Simplex method. Sensitivity analysis. Integer programming. The transportation problem. Case studies.

Business finance, financial decisions, time value of money, investment assessment criteria, socially responsible investment, ESG criteria, environmental analysis, social behavior, business management, new approach to risk assessment, ecological leverage, multicriteria decision analysis, case studies.

Establishment and operation of SMEs. Classification of SMEs. Organization and management of SMEs. Management accounting. Corporate and tax legislation for SMEs. Cost accounting for SMEs. Financing of SMEs. Financial investment, analysis. Preparation of business plans. Project and resource management. SME development models. SME sustainability. Leadership. Innovation and SMEs. Innovative ideas. Creativity, Marketing. Marketing Plan. Competition, Market Segmentation. New product design and development, Sales Promotion, SMEs’ evaluation, Strategy Development and Evaluation, Laboratories: Projects.

Concept, definition, and role of strategic planning. The strategic planning process: Specification of strategies, types of objectives, assessment of the external environment, internal analysis, generation of alternative strategies, strategy implementation, strategic control. Pro-forma statements, predefined costs, analysis of deviations. The balanced scorecard approach. Applications of strategic planning in firms and organizations.

Postgraduate courses

Descriptive statistics (central tendency measures, variance measures, skewness, kurtosis, percentiles, quartiles). Statistical graphs (histograms, boxplots, scatter plots). Statistical distributions (normal and binomial distribution). Confidence intervals for means and proportions. Hypotheses testing. Linear and logistic regression. Introduction to operations research and linear optimization. Software for statistical analysis and optimization.

Financial statements. Financial statements analysis. Working capital management. Funding sources. Cost of capital. Capital structure. Forecasting financial needs. Time value of capital. Investment analysis. Dividend policy.

Types of financial decisions. Corporate objectives. The multidimensional nature of financial decisions. Financial modeling. Analytical methodologies for financial decisions. Corporate performance evaluation. Alternative sources of funding. Venture capital.

Basic concepts and definitions. Fixed and variable costs. Break-even point. Basic costing techniques (absorption costing, marginal costing). Standard costing. Modern cost accounting. Budget preparation and capital budgeting. Value-added management. Management accountants as business partners. Modern, future-oriented, and strategic costing. Opportunity costs. Variable costs. Fixed costs. Sunk costs. Management accounting and technology. Strategic management accounting. Flexible technologies, flexible organizations, and digitalization.

Types of financial risks. Risk management strategies. Risk diversification. Market risk. Systematic and idiosyncratic risk. Value at risk measurement and validation procedures. Credit risk. Credit scoring and rating systems. Interest rate risk. Exchange rate risk. Financial engineering and risk hedging through financial derivatives.

Fundamental corporate strategy approaches. Analysis of internal and external environments. Corporate value chain. SWOT analysis. Strategic objectives. Strategy implementation. Strategies for competitive advantage. Corporate innovation. Technological strategy. Corporate governance. Case studies.