To ensure in-depth knowledge and skills vital for a chosen career path, you can tailor the major to suit your own interests and choose to specialize in areas ranging from corporate finance, capital markets or quantitative finance/Fintech:

• Corporate Finance: prepares students for careers in investment banking, M&A advisory, security analysis, commercial banking, private equity, management consulting, and corporate positions. Students gain an understanding of how corporate financial decisions affect operations and the effect of capital budgeting and business restructuring decisions for the firm's choice of funding. Topics include corporate valuation, securities issuance, capital structure, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, banking, and private equity.
  
  
• Capital Markets: prepares students for careers in portfolio management, risk management, treasury functions, and securities sales and trading. The courses deal with the pricing of financial securities, portfolio management, behavioral finance, and investor psychology. They also cover the interaction between financial markets and macroeconomics, including how financial markets are both a source of information and a tool for financial regulation and economic policies.
  
  
• Quantitative Finance and Fintech: prepares students for careers as specialists in quantitative-oriented areas such as asset management, risk management, and financial product development, as well as financial regulation. The rapid technological development has increased the demand for candidates with a deep understanding of financial theory combined with strong quantitative skills. Companies have large amounts of data and need employees who can analyze this data, for example using machine learning, to make strategic decisions. This specialization also offers insights on implications of structural changes and opportunities caused by digitalization and new financial regulation.

The Financial Economics major consists of 45 ECTS courses and 30 ECTS for a master thesis. Students are recommended to take courses the three first semesters and work on the master thesis in the last semester. The general structure of the coursework is as follows:

Course requirements

• Two core courses: 
  • FIE400X Investments
  • FIE402 Corporate Finance
• One empirical methods course: 
  • FIE401 Financial Econometrics, or
  • ECN402 Econometric Techniques
• Three more elective courses within the finance major

The core courses in the major provide a foundation for the elective courses in finance. You are encouraged to take the core courses and the course in empirical methods during the two first terms to have flexibility in your choice of electives.

The courses are organized in three tracks. If students want to specialise in a specific track, we recommend that a minimum of three FIE elective courses are chosen from that track.

Courses within each track:

CORPORATE FINANCE

FIE433 International Finance

FIE436 Venture Capital, Private Equity and IPO's

FIE437 Valuation

FIE441 Taxes and Business Strategy

FIE443 Mergers and Acquisitions

FIE444 Bank Management

FIE457 Entrepreneurial Finance

FIE459 Sustainable Finance

FIE460 Ship Finance and Marine Insurance

FIE462 Finance Innovations in Insurance

ECO420 Corporate Governance

ECO422 Advanced Corporate Finance

ACC421B Valuation (N)

ACC421E Valuation with financial statement analysis

CAPITAL MARKETS

ECO421 Asset Pricing

FIE403 Business Cycle Analysis

FIE420 Pengemarkeder og bankvesen

FIE421 Long-Term Macroeconomic Analysis

FIE423 Finansiell modellering av renteinstrumenter

FIE425 Derivatives and Risk Management

FIE426 Kapitalforvaltning

FIE431 Krakk og kriser

FIE432X Personlig økonomi

FIE433 International Finance

FIE434 Behavioural Finance and Wealth Management

FIE442 Growth and Architecture of Financial Systems

FIE446 Financial Engineering

FIE447 Trading, Liquidity, and Pricing in Securities Markets

FIE448 Banking and Financial Technology (FinTech)

FIE450 Programming with Applications in Finance

FIE451 Asset Management with Programming Applications

FIE459 Sustainable Finance

FIE460 Ship Finance and Marine Insurance

FIE461 Risk and Insurance

QUANTITATIVE FINANCE AND FINTECH

FIE435 Financial Modelling

FIE446 Financial Engineering

FIE448 Banking and Financial Technology (FinTech)

FIE450 Programming with Applications in Finance

FIE451 Asset Management with Programming Applications

FIE453 Big Data with Applications to Finance

FIE458 Deep Learning with Applications to Finance

BAN432 Applied Textual Data Analysis for Business and Finance

ECN430 Empirical Methods and Applications in Macroeconomics and Finance

ECO421 Asset Pricing

ECO423 Principles of Derivatives Pricing and Risk Management

MASTER'S THESIS

FIETHE Independent work/thesis (30 stp) Autumn Spring

Upon successful completion of the major, the candidate shall:

Knowledge

K1: have extensive, updated knowledge of relevant theories within finance, their application and empirical basis - as well as having special expertise in at least two of the three main themes of the financial markets, corporate finance and macroeconomics.

K2: have solid competence in methods of empirical analysis in finance.

K3: have a broad understanding of the issues that characterise today's national and international financial markets.

Skills

S1:be analytically strong with a proven ability to both understand and carry out a broad set of calculations.

S2: be able to update skills on their own throughout their career.

S3: be independent, reflective and mature in their work.

General competence

G1: be able to utilise available information and data with necessary critical understanding of sources

G2: have the ability to work in teams and to communicate and present professional analyses and issues to both specialists and a wider audience.

G3: have solid competence on ethical issues and social responsibility in general - and in relation to the financial market in particular.

You are required to take at least 7.5 ECTS in Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability (ERS).

You can choose any course at NHH’s list of ERS courses. You can choose whether to fulfill the ERS requirement within your major, as part of your minor, or as one of your elective courses.

The following courses are approved as ERS courses within this major:

FIE459 Sustainable Finance

See list of all ERS courses

Finance provides key tools to help allocate resources efficiently. A necessary ingredient is correctly determined asset prices. However, prices can be distorted because of externalities or incentive conflicts. Managers need to be able to both identify such situations and then act appropriately. Hence, an important focus of our program is to train our students to understand the short and long-term consequences of externalities, incentive conflicts, or other issues that affect asset prices. Prominent examples considered are corporate governance, the shareholder vs. stakeholder debate, and the role of climate risk on firms’ financing and investment opportunities.

As an NHH student you have excellent opportunities to gain valuable international experience during your studies through semester exchange, the Double Degree program, CEMS, Engage.EU, Intern Abroad, and summer courses.

Many of our students work abroad and are internationally recruited.

Read more about international opportunities

The Financial Economics major prepares you for a wide range of outstanding career opportunities within the financial services industry, consulting, and management.

Read more about career possibilities for NHH graduates

MINIMUM ONE

• FIE400E Investments
• FIE400N Investments (N)
• FIE402 Corporate Finance

ELECTIVES

• BAN432 Applied Textual Data Analysis for Business and Finance
• ECN402 Econometrics
• ECN430 Empirical Methods and Applications in Macroeconomics and Finance
• ECO420 Corporate Governance
• ECO421 Asset Pricing
• ECO422 Advanced Corporate Finance
• ECO423 Advanced Derivatives
• FIE401 Financial Econometrics
• FIE403 Business Cycle Analysis
• FIE420 Money and Banking (N)
• FIE421 Macroeconomic Analysis and Sustainability
• FIE425 Derivatives and Risk Management
• FIE426 Asset Management
• FIE431 Crashes and Crises (N)
• FIE432 Private Finance
• FIE432E Personal Finance and Taxation
• FIE433 International Finance
• FIE434 Behavioural Finance and Wealth Management
• FIE435 Financial Modelling with Excel
• FIE436 Venture Capital, Private Equity and IPOs
• FIE437 Valuation
• FIE441 Taxes and Business Strategy
• FIE442 Growth and Architecture of Financial Systems
• FIE443 Mergers and Acquisitions
• FIE446 Financial Engineering
• FIE447 Trading, Liquidity, and Pricing in Securities Markets
• FIE448 Banking and Fintech
• FIE450 Programming with Applications in Finance
• FIE451 Asset Management with Programming Applications
• FIE453 Big Data with Applications to Finance
• FIE457 Entrepreneurial Finance
• FIE458 Deep Learning with Applications to Finance
• FIE459 Sustainable Finance
• FIE460 Ship Finance and Marine Insurance
• FIE461 Risk and Insurance
• FIE462 Finance Innovations in Insurance