The "Bachelor of Science in Business Administration – Finance" program is a general undergraduate degree program. The program requires completion of 127 credit hours of coursework, providing necessary breadth and depth as well as extensive hands-on field experience. Students would normally take four years to complete the graduation requirements. The program instructions are offered in English language. This handbook provides details on various aspects of the program design and delivery. Despite being a general business degree program, the program has multiple unique aspects that make it stand out among similar degree programs offered in the region and beyond. The program was designed by keeping the internationalization facet at the fore. The program provides a unique global perspective that focuses on the connections between business, economics, finance, management, operations and supply chain, project management, technologies in business, strategy, etc. The program is designed to support the KSA Vision 2030 and the future needs of job markets locally and globally. As such, the program was benchmarked against the top similar degree programs in the world as well as in the region. Furthermore, the program is designed to support offering a minor, in the near future, in this field of specialization within and beyond CBA. This aspect is offered by only a handful of business schools in the whole GCC region. Because of CBA 's unique core curriculum, students are able to minor in one or more areas such as Accounting, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Marketing, MIS, etc. with little additional coursework. This major prepares students for providing business management leadership strategies designed to address the unique challenges and intricacies in the 21st century. Graduates of this forward-looking program will be ready for managerial and leadership positions in private and public sector as well as higher education opportunities in leading universities.
Culminating Experience All BSBA majors must satisfy the Culminating Experience component of the College Core Curriculum by taking a course designated as such on campus no earlier than the second semester of the junior year.
The objective of the major in Finance is to provide students with a background of knowledge and a set of skills to enable them to perform successfully in finance-related fields. These fields reflect both global and domestic dimensions and they include corporate or business finance, financial management in government and not-for-profit organizations, financial planning, investments, banking, insurance, real estate, and public accounting. Advanced work in the Finance major features a problem-solving and decision-making orientation. Case problems and investment games are used and current developments in the economy and in financial markets and institutions are emphasized to help students appreciate the complexities of financial management. A student may choose the Finance major because of its universality, even if the student is meeting all or most of the requirements in real estate or insurance. Finance majors have acknowledged the quality and benefits of the major, making it one of the most popular majors in the School of Business.
FIN 301 Financial Management 3 Designed to develop the financial skills and logical thought processes necessary to understand and discuss financial policy decisions in a global economy. Specific objectives include developing an understanding of the time value of money; using financial statements in decision making; and understanding the nature of financial markets, the cost of capital, valuation of stocks and bonds, management of short-term assets, short-term and long-term financing, capital markets, and multinational financial management. Addresses the impact of legal, social, technological, and ethical considerations on efficient economic outcomes. Requires a financial calculator and provides an opportunity to develop computer spreadsheet skills.
FIN 312 Corporate Finance 3 The course develops theoretical framework for understanding and analysing major financial problems of modern company in market environment. The course covers basic models of valuation of corporate capital, including pricing models for primary financial assets, real assets valuation and investment projects analysis, capital structure and various types of corporate capital employed, derivative assets and contingent claims on assets. It provides necessary knowledge in evaluating different management decisions and its influence on corporate performance and value. The course requires the knowledge in micro and macroeconomics, accounting and banking. The course is based on lectures, seminars, case studies and self-study. "Corporate finance" is a two-semesters course designed to prepare students for UOL examination.
FIN 322 Financial Market and Institutions 3 This course is intended to help you understand the role of financial institutions and markets play in the business environment that you will face in the future. It also helps you to develop a series of applications of principles from finance and economics that explore the connection between financial markets, financial institutions and the economy. On the financial markets side, we will learn the term structure of interest rates, stocks, principals of derivatives, and currencies. On the institutions side, we will learn commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, mutual funds, the Federal Reserve Systems and their role of in the economy.
FIN 431 Investments 3 The focus of this course is on financial theory and empirical evidence for making investment decisions. Topics include: portfolio theory; equilibrium models of security prices (including the capital asset pricing model and the arbitrage pricing theory); the empirical behavior of security prices; market efficiency; performance evaluation; and behavioral finance.
FIN 432 Finance Modeling 3 Students will learn to use Excel to solve financial problems and build sophisticated models for financial decision making. Applications will be drawn from financial statement analysis, corporate financial planning, capital budgeting, modern portfolio theory, fixed income investments, options pricing, and others.
FIN 434 Portfolio Management 3 This course Provides students with techniques for evaluating investments on an individual basis & in the context of portfolio. Techniques for analyzing investments focus on maximizing expected returns while minimizing risk. The most powerful way to achieve this objective is by creating a portfolio of investments. Topics covered are Financial Statement Analysis, Markets & Instruments, Equity Investments, Debt Investments & Portfolio Management.
The general framework describes the program requirements. These include University, College, and Program Major (Core, Electives, Support, Graduation Project, and Practical Training) courses. The University requirements include compulsory and electives courses in the areas of Arabic language and Islamic culture (compulsory), Humanities and Arts, Social Sciences, Diversity and Multiculturalism, and Specialized courses in Islamic Studies (elective). The college requirements include courses that are foundation courses in the Business Administration area. These include, Operations Marketing, Leadership, Strategic Marketing, Supply chain Marketing, Human resource Management, Business communication, Training and Development, Knowledge Management, and Organizational governance etc. The program major requirements include core and electives in the area of Finance, besides practical training courses. The distribution of credit hours in the subject areas has been in accordance to the credit hours used in the benchmarked universities, the Association to advanced collegiate schools of Business (AACSB) credits criteria for Finance.
Students are required to take the following Practical Training course, offered in the summer term of the Junior Year. Students must pass this course before undertaking the Capstone Project course, which is offered in the Senior Year.
The course Practical Training (FIN 394) provides students with an opportunity to integrate theory and practice by working in a supervised environment. The setup of the training is outlined below. Setup of the training period: The college committee arranges student placements in relevant industry for obtaining practical experience. The practical or field placement agreements serve as a contract between the University and the training organization. Each student undertakes full time training for a duration of eight weeks, 30-40 hours a week, during the summer semester in organizations that deal with all organizational related issues. The internships offer practical applications of theoretical studies in the areas of Marketing. The supervisor at the workplace is responsible for guiding and assigning tasks to the student as well as reporting the student's progress to the faculty advisor at the College of Business Administration Department. The general guidelines about the types of outcomes students are required to produce are provided by the college to the supervisor at the workplace. Upon the completion of practical experience in the industry, each student is required to submit technical reports to both the on-site supervisor and the faculty advisor and to give an oral presentation in the presence of the same.