MSc Finance

• Advanced Corporate Finance
• Derivatives
• Market Microstructure
• Fixed Income Securities
• Quantitative Methods for Finance
  
• Financial Econometrics
• Finance Theory

Optional Modules (Choose on e) :

• Trading Techniques
• International Finance
• Global Finance and Financial Markets

The programme then concludes with a dissertation project

Business skills for life: t he essential Aston Professional Development Programme

The Aston Professional Development Programme (PDP) is an integral module that forms part of your MSc taught course from day one.This compulsory module runs throughout the academic year. We have designed it around knowledge through practice - to enhance your employability as you customise the PDP experience to suit your own learning goals and skills development needs.

We take a multidimensional, qualitative and individually tailored approach. Using reflective models, we integrate a competency-based framework into our existing academic programmes.  You will engage with different kinds of experiential learning, such as skills workshops, work-based experience, study abroad and develop your own unique skillset.  

This pathway between theory and the world of work brings together Aston’s faculty, careers practitioners and business and academic partnerships teams to help you step into your future careers as culturally aware, global professionals.

You will acquire skills in the following areas: giving presentations; team working; report writing; negotiation and IT skills.

Modules taught on this MSc will enable you to develop a wide range of technical and transferable skills and knowledge demanded by graduate employers in banking and finance. Specialist knowledge areas developed on this programme include:

• Understanding of investment valuation and portfolio management, focusing on fixed income securities, pricing of futures and options contracts, performance and risk management
• Application of option pricing models and understanding of trading and hedging strategies
• Understanding of market microstructures including auction and dealer trading systems and the influence of liquidity, inventory and adverse selection on trading costs
• Understanding of key mathematical and statistical techniques underpinning finance and investment models including use of sampling and estimation theory, multiple regression analysis and approximation techniques
• Application of econometric techniques (including time series methods, smoothing techniques, principal components techniques) to modelling financial markets
• Multi-cultural teamwork and presentation skills developed through group-work
• Analytical skills developed through research dissertation

Dr Leonidas Tsiaras
BA, MSc, PhD 
Leonidas is a Lecturer in Finance at Aston Business School. Prior to this, he was a PhD student at Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University. During his PhD studies, he became affiliated with the Centre for Research in Econometric Analysis of TimE Series (CREATES) as a Junior Fellow and the Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern University) as a Visiting Research Scholar. He has also worked as a Principal Analyst at the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit (Cabinet Office, U.K.).His current research interests are in areas of Financial Econometrics and Empirical Finance.