Course Outline

Functions and Business Models of Financial Institutions
- Commercial banks and deposit takers
  - Maturity transformation model
- Sensitivity of banking sector to market stress
  - Deposit insurance
  - Resolution
  - Living wills
  - Bail in instruments
- Insurance companies
  - Asset/liability management
  - Risk tolerance
  - Economic capital
- Structure and functions of Investment Banks (IB’s)
  - Financing
  - Client facilitation
  - Mergers and Acquisitions
- Contrast business models of buy side firms
  - Asset managers and sell side firms
  - IB’s
- Fund management
  - Pension funds
  - Defined benefit versus defined contribution
- Investment management
  - Performance ratios
  - Benchmarks
  - Passive versus active
- Hedge funds
  - Hedge fund size
  - Assets Under Management (AUM)/incentive fees business model
  - Regulatory oversight
Macro-Economic Drivers of Financial Markets
- Growth Domestic Product (GDP) growth, productivity, employment, capacity utilization
- Increasing role of emerging market (EM) economies, frontier markets and frontier currencies
- Interest rate differentials
  - Comparison of short term rates
  - US, EU, UK, Japanese rates
- Foreign Exchange (FX) carry trade
  - Traditional pairs and increasing use of dollar as funding currency
- Balance of payments, trade imbalances, capital flows
- Inflation outlooks for developed and developing economies
  - Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI)
- Productivity differentials
  - Costs for labor and capital, and Return on Investment (ROI)
- Geo-political events
  - Political crises, currency wars, trade policy
- Commodity markets - supply chain challenges, de-globalization themes
  - Inflationary impulses, monetary policy response
Monetary Policy of Central Banks
- Monetary policies of US, EU, UK, Japan and China
  - Quantitative Easing (QE)
  - Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT)
  - Capital controls
- Traditional tools of open market operations
  - Liquidity provisioning, reserves
- Unorthodox techniques
  - QE/asset purchase programs
- Yield curve characteristics
  - Influence of short term rates on long rates
- Macro-prudential tools
  - Scope and purpose
- Status of non-discretionary policy guidelines
  - Taylor ratio
- FX reserves management
  - Role of EM central banks in managing FX rates
- Implications of interest rate policy normalization for asset markets, impact on EM
Overview of Risk Management
- Statistical nature of risk versus absence of probabilistic dimension to uncertainty
- Summarizing the principal types of financial risk
- Types of risk
  - Market risk and capital adequacy
  - Credit risk
  - Liquidity risk
  - Sovereign risk
  - Systemic risk
  - Operational, legal and reputational risk
- Methodological principles of Value at Risk (VaR)
  - Are financial returns normally distributed?
- Risk/reward concepts from Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM)
- Modelling risk scenarios
  - Stress testing
  - Regressions based on outlier values
  - Monte Carlo simulations
  - Back testing
- Hedging strategies
  - Use of swaps and other derivatives to manage risk
- Corporate governance issues
  - Conflicts of interest
  - Internal risk control processes
  - Non-executive directors (NED’s)
- Major regulatory initiatives
  - Sarbanes-Oxley
  - Dodd-Frank Act
  - BCBS and Basel II and III
  - Revamped UK regulatory structure
  - Financial Stability Board
Root Causes of Financial Instability and Systemic Risk
- Historical illustrations of investment manias (e.g. South Sea Bubble, 1929 Crash, 1987 Crash, Asian Crisis, Japanese asset markets crash 1990, Nasdaq Collapse 2000/1)
- Special characteristics of the systemic crisis of 2007/8
  - Counter party credit risk
  - American International Group (AIG)
- Financial contagion
- Joint probability of defaults, left tail dependencies, heightened asset movement correlations, tail risk
- Macro-economic theory
  - How satisfactory are mainstream explanations for crashes?
- Credit cycles
  - Boom/bust
  - Excessive leverage
  - Inadequate capital and liquidity
- Minsky’s view of the inherent instability of financial systems
- New directions in explaining “non-rationality” in economic behavior, over-confidence, cognitive and emotional dissonance, “herding behavior”
- Episodic crashes from market micro-structure
  - 1987 program trading
  - 2010 “Flash Crash”

Schedule & Fees

2026 Schedule & Fees

USD 2,600

Per participant

6 - 10 Dec, 2026
English

USD 2,600

Per participant

6 - 10 Dec, 2026
Arabic

USD 2,600

Per participant

27 - 31 Dec, 2026
English

USD 2,600

Per participant

27 - 31 Dec, 2026
Arabic

2027 Schedule & Fees

USD 2,600

Per participant

7 - 11 Mar, 2027
English

USD 2,600

Per participant

7 - 11 Mar, 2027
Arabic

USD 2,600

Per participant

28 Mar - 1 Apr, 2027
English

USD 2,600

Per participant

28 Mar - 1 Apr, 2027
Arabic

USD 2,600

Per participant

6 - 10 Jun, 2027
English

USD 2,600

Per participant

6 - 10 Jun, 2027
Arabic

USD 2,600

Per participant

27 Jun - 1 Jul, 2027
English

USD 2,600

Per participant

27 Jun - 1 Jul, 2027
Arabic

USD 2,600

Per participant

5 - 9 Sep, 2027
English

USD 2,600

Per participant

5 - 9 Sep, 2027
Arabic

USD 2,600

Per participant

26 - 30 Sep, 2027
English

USD 2,600

Per participant

26 - 30 Sep, 2027
Arabic

USD 2,600

Per participant

5 - 9 Dec, 2027
English

USD 2,600

Per participant

5 - 9 Dec, 2027
Arabic

USD 2,600

Per participant

26 - 30 Dec, 2027
English

USD 2,600

Per participant

26 - 30 Dec, 2027
Arabic

Mastering the Essentials of the Global Financial Industry

Why Attend

Course Objectives

Target Audience

Target Competencies

Course Outline

Schedule & Fees

2026 Schedule & Fees

2027 Schedule & Fees

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