• Understand the essential components and relationships among the key financial statements
• Examine the income statement, balance sheet and statement of cash flows
• Analyse accounting policies; distinguishing operating and non-operating items
• Evaluate basic financial statements; basic profitability analysis and ROIC trees.

• Develop a more sophisticated understanding of financial markets; the time value of money
• Understand sources of finance including equity, debt, leasing, private equity; CAPM and the cost of capital.

• Investigate cost drivers; cost allocation methods; make-or-buy decisions
• Understand flexible budgeting and profitability analysis

• Understand how firms create value through better working capital management;
• Evaluate investment projects, marketing, and R&D expenditures
• Estimate project cash flows
• Determine the value created by investment decisions.

• Understand the meaning of international financial markets for corporate decision-making in a globalised world
• Understand the economic intuition behind changes in exchange rates through the interplay of interest rates, inflation levels and exchange rates
• Ability to discuss the conceptual and managerial analysis of economic exchange exposure

• Evaluate mergers and acquisitions (‘M&A’), including the valuation of target companies and synergies, and the structuring of consideration.
• Understand ‘agency problems’ and their management through effective corporate governance, performance related pay and other arrangements.
• Appreciate the typical responsibilities and challenges facing finance functions.

John McCallig is an Assistant Professor in the Accountancy Subject Area. He graduated with a PhD in Accountancy from the University of Lancaster in 2003. John worked as an Auditor with EY in Dublin and is a member of both Chartered Accountants Ireland and CIMA. He was director of the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School MAcc Programme from 2007-2010.

John teaches Financial Reporting and Financial Statement Analysis. He is particularly interested in the use of technology in helping students to meet their learning outcomes. He has written a book on Introductory Accounting and revised and developed new modules and programmes. John introduced SAP to the accounting curriculum at UCD in 2013. He has been an external examiner at several universities. In 2017, John received a College of Business Excellence in Teaching Award.

John's research agenda concerns the relationship between stock market valuation, accounting numbers and non-financial information. He uses statistical methods to investigate this relationship. In particular, he has examined the impact of customer satisfaction and drug company research activities on stock prices. He is also interested in investment returns, the capital asset pricing model and the measurement of leverage risk. For more details on John's research interests, please click here.

Cal is a member of faculty in finance at the UCD College of Business and a Fellow at the UCD Geary Institute.

His research interests are in areas of corporate, financial institution, and environmental finance. He has published in international scholarly journals including the Journal of Econometrics, the Energy Economics journal, and the Financial Review.

Previously he has worked as a lecturer in finance at the Department of Economics and Finance, Durham Business School. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from Trinity College Dublin. He has been a Visiting Scholar at New York University Stern School of Business, Yale University, at Groningen and Tilburg Universities in the Netherlands and at the London School of Economics.

He is a Fulbright Scholar and he has also received other awards and fellowships including a Thomas Moran Fellowship from University College Dublin and the Mutual of America Life Insurance and the Barrington Medal from the Statistical & Social Inquiry Society.

He has lectured in corporate finance, financial econometrics, financial risk management and financial theory, both at the undergraduate, executive and graduate levels.

His administrative duties have included the role of Academic Director of the B.Sc. in Economics & Finance programme at the Quinn School of Business, UCD (2009-14). He is a Principal Investigator at the Enterprise Ireland Financial Services Governance Risk and Compliance Technology Centre.

John Cotter is Professor in Finance and the Chair in Quantitative Finance at University College Dublin.  He is a Research Fellow at the UCLA Ziman Research Center for Real Estate.  John has previously had visiting positions at UCLA, London School of Economics and ESSEC Business School.

John's research, teaching and consultancy interests are in the areas of Volatility modelling and measuring, risk management and investment analysis with applications in equity, currency, derivative, fixed income and real estate markets.  He has taught extensively on undergraduate, graduate and executive programmes. John has been awarded a UCD Faculty of Commerce Outstanding Educator Teaching Award.

John is the founding Director of the Centre for Financial Markets at University College Dublin. He is the Director of the Financial Mathematics Computation Research Cluster (FMC2) a multi-university cross-discipline research body in Finance. John is Associate Editor of the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money and the European Journal of Finance.

John has published many professional papers including in the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Banking and Finance, and the Journal of International Money and Finance. He has received many research grants including being a Principal Investigator in the Financial Mathematics Computation Research Cluster (FMC2) funded by Science Foundation Ireland. John was awarded an Outstanding Research Contribution Award at the UCD School of Business, University College Dublin.

John has consulted for many organizations both in and outside Ireland.  He has also served as an expert witness in several financial cases.

Derek is a former partner of Deloitte and Arthur Andersen where he spent 28 years in practice providing consulting, corporate finance and audit services to a wide range of public companies and leading multinational enterprises including AIB, Aviva, Bank of Ireland, Bord Gais, Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, CRH, Dunnes Stores, Elan, Hewlett Packard, Irish Life, KBC, Oracle,  Paypal, Topaz, United Drug, VHI, Yahoo. As a partner in Deloitte Derek was a member of the Leadership Team from 2005 to 2011 and held the leadership roles of HR Partner and Clients & Markets Partner during that period. 

Derek is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland. He has lectured for the Institute and in his role as Examiner, advised on and developed material for the Final Admitting Exam. Derek is also non-executive Director for a number of companies in Ireland.

Jack is a former Chief Financial Officer of Paddy Power (now ‘Flutter Entertainment’) plc. He has been an adjunct faculty member on the Smurfit MBA programme and the Smurfit MSc in Accounting and Financial Management since 2018. Before teaching, Jack had a 25-year career as a corporate accountant, most recently at Paddy Power plc.

Prior to that Jack was European COO for ITG Inc, an NYSE listed agency stockbroker, and before that Head of Financial & Management Reporting at Ulster Bank Markets. Jack started his career with Arthur Andersen in Audit & Business Advisory. Jack is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland. He has lectured for the Institute and developed material for the Final Admitting Exam. He is a Graduate of University College Dublin.

Ken O’Sullivan BComm (UCC), MBS(UCD), FCA, FIB(IOB)

Ken is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland, Fellow of the Institute of Banking and completed his accounting training with PwC. He graduated from University College Cork with a BComm and from University College Dublin with an MBS.

A former accounting lecturer at the University of Limerick, he has extensive teaching experience at undergraduate, postgraduate levels and on various professional accounting education programmes being the senior financial reporting lecturer with BPP Ireland for over 20 years.

Ken is the Director of Risk Management Education at the Institute of Banking and the Head Strategic Advisor to Mr. John Trethowan at the Governments Credit Review Office. He is a former General Manager Business Banking and Corporate and Institutional Banking with Danske Bank Ireland and was a member of the Executive Committee. He was Head of the Business Credit team at the Central Bank of Ireland and led the CBI credit and asset quality interaction with the Troika and responsible for the delivery of all credit related projects. He was a member of the Government working committee established to set up the Loan Guarantee Scheme for the SME sector.

Whilst in the Central Bank of Ireland he led the following projects:

2012, 2011, 2010- Central Bank of Ireland’s asset quality reviews, data validation and integrity reviews of the Irish Covered Financial Institutions (AIB, BOI, PTSB, EBS, Anglo) mandated by the Troika under the Financial Measures Programme for Ireland (PCAR and PLAR);

2011- Authored the Central Bank of Ireland Impairment Provisioning and Disclosure Guidelines which set out the CBI best practice guidelines regarding the accounting policies, procedures and disclosures which the State supported Covered Institutions should adopt for loans and receivables financial assets.