Knowing how much a business or asset is worth is critical in making informed decisions about selling, expanding, or seeking investment. In this intensive program, you'll gain the analytical frameworks to evaluate and engage in value-creating decisions across both public and private markets.
Valuation is not just a financial concept—it’s a strategic imperative. Understanding how to measure the value of a company, asset, or investment provides a critical framework to make optimal decisions. As a leader, mastering valuation empowers you to make informed strategic choices, optimize resources, navigate complex deals, and build stakeholder trust.
Whether you need to understand —or have direct involvement in — M&A, investing, divestitures, or other strategic moves in a capital market, this program will broaden and deepen your understanding of valuation to help you make market-leading decisions.
You will:
Designed for accelerated professional growth
This intensive program, led by a team of top faculty, combines essential theories and models with real cases and expert-led discussions. You'll understand the real-world complexities of transactions, accelerating your experience level and helping you to anticipate challenges and opportunities with your own strategic decisions.
Gain regional expertise
This program is offered at your choice of Chicago Booth's campuses— Chicago, London, and Hong Kong—providing a unparalleled regional experience.
You'll explore regional challenges and opportunities with expert Chicago Booth alumni who are integrated into the program. Discussion topics are tailored to the program location, such as an EMEA focus in the London offering, Asia focus in Hong Kong offering, and an Americas focus in the Chicago offering.
Why Chicago Booth?
As the alma mater of countless alumni who are finance executives at Fortune 500 and entrepreneurial firms, and U.S. News' #1 Business School for 2023-24, Chicago Booth is the ideal setting for executives to advance their expertise in finance.
One unquestioned strength of Chicago Booth is our world-renowned faculty. Ten Booth scholars—four of whom are currently teaching—have won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and defined the nature of our financial markets.
The Chicago Tradition in Economics and Finance is about getting answers to important economic problems through a rigorous, data-driven approach. Many ideas from UChicago provide the foundation for valuation and how we think about capital markets today, such as Miller-Modigliani’s theory of capital structure, Gene Fama's research on efficient capital markets, and Black-Scholes’ option pricing model -- among many other financial breakthroughs associated with UChicago.
When you attend Booth's Executive Education programs, you'll learn from top MBA faculty who are at the cutting edge of the field.
This program is designed for executives who engage in, or need to evaluate, corporate transactions or financing. Executives from public, private, and government organizations will benefit.
Titles include:
The program benefits a range of executives, from those preparing for their company's first valuation to more seasoned professionals seeking to gain exposure to more cases and structures.
Participants should have familiarity with finance concepts such as net present value (NPV), WACC, internal rate of return (IRR), capital structure, and other related concepts — gained either through professional experience or educational experience equivalent to the content of an MBA or a graduate-level corporate finance course such as Chicago Booth’s Executive Finance Program (previously titled Finance for Executives) or Mergers and Acquisitions.
Steven N. Kaplan teaches advanced MBA and executive courses in entrepreneurial finance and private equity, corporate finance, corporate governance, and wealth management. Business Week named him one of the top 12 business school teachers in the country. He co-founded the entrepreneurship program at Booth. Professor Kaplan has been a member of the faculty since 1988.
Amir Sufi is the Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He serves as an associate editor for the American Economic Review, the Journal of Finance, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Professor Sufi was awarded the 2017 Fischer Black Prize by the American Finance Association, given biennially to the top financial economics scholar under the age of 40.
Professor Sufi's research focuses on finance and macroeconomics. His research on household debt and the economy forms the basis of his book co-authored with Atif Mian: House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2014. He earned a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the Solow Endowment Prize for Graduate Student Excellence in Teaching and Research. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2005.
Professor Sapra joined the Booth faculty in 2000. Haresh Sapra studies the real effects of accounting measurement policies, disclosure regulation, and corporate governance. His current research focuses on the role of fair value accounting on financial stability. His research has been published in journals such as The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, and Games and Economic Behavior.
Nicholas W. Alexos joined Univar Solutions in January 2020 as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, bringing in-depth knowledge and expertise around market and margin expansion in the general industrial and consumer sectors. Before joining Univar Solutions, Mr. Alexos served as Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Administrative Officer at Dentsply Sirona, Inc. where he led the growth strategy and executed successful portfolio shaping initiatives. Previously he served as a Managing Director of Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC, where he helped a wide array of portfolio companies achieve growth and margin expansion.
He has served on a number of boards including VWR International, Option Care Health, Sirona Dental Systems, Team Health, Performance Health and various others. He has also served on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations including the Children's Inner City Educational Fund, Lake Forest Country Day School, MetroSquash, University of Chicago Booth School of Business Council, Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago and the Harvard Dental School of Medicine Advisory Board.
Mr. Alexos received his bachelor’s degree in business from Loyola University, and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Foundations of Valuation: Frameworks and Tools
Deal Structuring
Leveraged Finance
Private Equity Investing and Leveraged Buyouts
Pulling it all together – Understanding Activist Investors
Applications
Throughout the program, you'll explore applications in a variety of settings such as:
Content will be taught by a mix of Booth faculty and senior executives, often Booth alumni, who will lead case discussions and networking sessions. Program outline is subject to change.
This program qualifies as an elective in the Global Advanced Finance Program, an exclusive program that awards Chicago Booth alumni status after completing six finance and strategy elective sessions over two years.