Finance with Business Placement-BSc

In the first year, compulsory modules will provide you with the key fundamentals to examine and evaluate modern financial markets. These included:

• Introduction to Financial Accounting
• Introduction to Management Accounting
• Foundations of Finance
• Introduction to Economics
• Quantitative Methods.

Further optional modules will be chosen from a range which has in the past included:

• People Management and Organisations
• The Global Economy
• A Foreign Language.

In the second year you will study three compulsory modules, including:

• Corporate Finance
• Financial Markets and Institutions
• Introduction to Financial Econometrics.

By studying these modules you will be able to examine financial issues and the institutions, markets and securities that facilitate the vast array of financial transactions that occur continuously across global markets. Furthermore you will acquire numerous quantitative tools which enable you to interpret financial data and price financial securities.

The finance modules are complemented by two compulsory economics modules, including:

• Microeconomics
• Macroeconomics and International Finance.

You will also choose one further module from a selection which has previously included, for example

• Corporate Financial Reporting
• Principles of Business Law
• Auditing and Assurance
• Introduction to Taxation
• A Foreign Language.

All of our degrees offer you the option of spending your third year gaining practical experience on a business placement. Business placements are a great way to develop your employment marketability and to engage with employers early in their recruitment pipeline. We actively encourage you to explore this as an option within your degree. A placement requires a minimum of forty weeks of work experience, normally, between the beginning of July one year and the end of July the next year, and this then becomes the third year of a four-year degree programme. This allows you to really explore and understand your job and to find out if the career or company is for you.

• You will develop your practical skills, confidence and maturity.
• You can focus on a specific career path -many employers recruit graduates from their placement programme.
• You will be able to contextualise your studies better, be more mature in your attitude to work,
• You may decide to draw on your working experiences and access a more fulfilling dissertation research subject.

You will gain invaluable job search and graduate research skills by engaging in the competitive placement recruitment process.

To ensure you are getting the most out of your experience, we support your placement in a number of ways:

First Year Workshops help you to develop your Placement Strategy and to identify and develop those skills and competencies that will be critical to ensure you are attractive to potential placement employers. These typically involve Employers, Placement Mentors, representatives from Colleges, Societies and the Volunteering Community in Durham.

Second Year Workshops support you through the placement application process and allow you to develop into a supportive student group to travel along the road of gaining a placement together. They enable you to get to know those students who will return with you in the fourth year. Workshops typically involve employers, and former placement students.

Placement Mentors: We have a mentorship scheme whereby former placement students share their experiences of the application process and placement with first and second year students and those out on placement. If you become a placement mentor on your return to University you can continue to develop your interpersonal skills and slide back into your University life with another key role which may well develop a new sense of belonging as well as another valuable contribution to your CV..

Placement Tutors: Whilst you are on placement you are assigned a tutor who will visit you, liaise with your employer and ensure you gain the most from your experience.

The Business Placement year fees are set annually by the University – fees are % of the annual tuition fee. Any fees displayed are for guidance only. For the definitive amount of the Business Placement year fees payable please contact

*The offer of a place on a ‘with placement’ degree does not imply that Durham University Business School guarantees to find the student a placement. The Business School, in association with the University, will assist students in finding and applying for placements, but it is the responsibility of the student to apply for and to obtain a placement (which is subject to approval by the Business School). In the event that a student is unable to obtain a placement, transfer to the equivalent ‘non-placement’ programme is guaranteed provided the student is eligible to transfer on academic grounds. In line with Home Office rules, students from outside the EU will transfer onto the ‘with business placement’ programme only once they have successfully secured a placement (normally at the end of their second year of study). Therefore due to visa requirements, we recommend that international students interested in the business placement year as part of their degree apply for this programme when making their application to us via UCAS.

In the fourth year you will study three compulsory modules, including:

• Financial Econometrics
• Financial Theory and Corporate Policy
• Security Investment Analysis.

You will also complete a Dissertation which will allow you to analyse, in great depth, your choice of research question in finance. These modules facilitate the development of your theoretical and empirical knowledge of core and topical issues in finance.

You will also choose one module from a selection which has previously included:

• Financial Engineering
• International and Multinational Finance
• Behavioural Finance
• Computational Quantitative Finance
• Islamic Economics and Finance
• A Foreign Language

The course is founded in the disciplines of Finance and Economics and has significant application to practice whilst maintaining a rigorous academic underpinning.