Special Business and Finance Open Day

We invite all prospective students to Open Day on Wednesday 8 April. If you’d like to attend, please let us know by completing the short form below or send an email to the Admissions department

10.30am Communication in a Cross-Cultural Environment

Even with knowledge of the influence of culture in business (and even just an awareness that culture can be utilized to form strategies to gain competitive advantage in business situations) unless we are able to communicate appropriately it will all be for nothing. Employers stress that communication is the key skill they look for in applicants for work, and with good reason: poor communication is one of the prime causes of failed business endeavours. If we lack an understanding of this, then doing business with others from different cultural backgrounds will be extremely problematic.

Therefore, if we wish to be successful in the modern globalized business world, we need to harness communication. To do so we need to understand the process as well as the barriers that can be formed. In this session we will examine the influence that culture has on the creation, coding and delivery of business communication and then look at the impact that it can have in different business situations and how to avoid friction in communications.

3.00pm The Role of Risk Management in Financial Investments

Following the gigantic losses suffered by both commercial and investment banks on account of the financial crisis of 2007, many methods around risk management concerning suitability and feasibility of investments were called into question.

By far the most popular method of expressing and assessing risk since the 1990s has been the value at risk (VaR) model which measures the risk of a given loss on a specific portfolio of assets for a given probability and a given timeframe. After its introduction, VaR was applied to areas of finance – not only in risk management, but also in financial control, financial reporting and in computing regulatory capital. Later it appeared in non-financial areas as well. When the credit crunch started in 2007, several experts in the industry called into question VaR methodology and its underlying assumptions; and the entire theoretical framework was accused of creating a false sense of security and overconfidence among senior managers in the industry.

The main aim of this lecture is to outline the principal idea behind the methodology and history of VaR, and to point out its strengths, weaknesses and the consequences for risk management in the industry, through a critical appraisal of the existing literature in the field.