The Banking and Finance program is a specialized degree designed for students who wish to concentrate their career in financial markets and institutions. The program provides advanced training in the key areas of trading and risk management. A significant feature of this program is the combination of strong analytical foundations and applications that deal with real world issues.
Students will learn to integrate financial models, firm-specific as well as industry and economic factors in their decision making process. In this program, students will have access to meetings with highly qualified speakers from areas such as the financial industry, internship programs in major Italian and international financial institutions, and exchange programs in European and US universities.
Graduates from the Banking and Finance program will gain both the technical knowledge and the methodological tools suited to pursue professional and managerial careers in banks, asset management companies, security firms, large corporations (particularly in the Treasury and Finance departments), and regulators. Professional consulting positions in all areas of Banking and Finance represent another option for graduates.
First year credits
● Advanced financial accounting (5 ECTS/CFU)
● Advanced microeconomics (5 ECTS/CFU)
● Applied econometrics (8 ECTS/CFU)
● Applied statistics for finance (6 ECTS/CFU)
● Corporate finance (8 ECTS/CFU)
● Derivative securities pricing (8 ECTS/CFU)
● Monetary economics (6 ECTS/CFU)
● Principles of financial regulation (10 ECTS/CFU)
● Quantitative methods for finance (8 ECTS/CFU)
Second year credits
● Investment risk management (4 ECTS/CFU)
● Foreign language (French, German, or Spanish)* (4 ECTS/CFU)
● Market microstructure (8 ECTS/CFU)
● Risk management (8 ECTS/CFU)
● Electives (12 ECTS/CFU)
● Thesis (20 ECTS/CFU)
* The foreign language course can be anticipated to the first year. The language of instruction of the French and Spanish foreign language course is taught in English. German is taught in Italian.
Elective courses list Business area
● Corporate governance and social responsibility - I part (4 ECTS/CFU)
● International corporate finance (8 ECTS/CFU)
● International financial markets (4 ECTS/CFU)
● Project management (8 ECTS/CFU)
● Real estate finance (4 ECTS/CFU)
● Stage/Internship (8 ECTS/CFU)
NB: Upon submitting the study program for the first Master’s degree year, students may insert up to 12 ECTS relative to the teachings of the second year.
The financial district, including the Italian Stock Exchange, is located only ten minutes from our campus, a prime vicinity for those students who plan on studying in the field of Banking and Finance.
Cattolica takes great pride in its program contributors. Both academics and professionals from the field teach at our University. Special guests and renowned experts will enhance your learning experience at Cattolica.
Cattolica’s Career Service will help orientate you along the paths of research, internships and employment, providing you with highly valuable information and support.
At Cattolica, international students should never fear being alone. We have invested in a range of services which ensure that our international visitors are fully supported. Our objective is to guarantee that the unique Cattolica welcome is there for all.
The Master in Economics and Finance is a graduate program, that allows students to complete their training in economics providing them with a thorough understanding of the role and working of the state in modern economies.
The Master is a full-time, intensive course, with a maximum enrollment of 20 students. The Master offers courses taught in English and it is accessible to students of all countries. The diploma, issued by Università Cattolica, is recognized as a second level Master’s degree by the Italian Government.
The Master will allow students to acquire the needed knowledge and research experience in order to pursue further studies with a Ph.D. in Economics; allow them to integrate their academic experience with professional skills of theoretical and practical relevance.
Graduate students are invited to take part in the Seminar series, which is organized by the Department of Economics and Finance on a weekly basis. During the last two years, it has featured scholars from top European and U.S. Institutions, such as Northwestern University, University of Southern California, University of Maryland, European Central Bank, CEMFI-Madrid, Université de Toulouse, Tel Aviv University, Queen Mary College of London, and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Our research environment also benefits from many initiatives, such as the “Annual Lecture” in Political Economy, which, in recent years, has been delivered by prominent academics such as James Robinson (Harvard University), Peter Howitt (Brown University), Howard Rosenthal (Princeton University), and Daron Acemoglu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT).
Students will be able to integrate their academic experience with professional skills of theoretical practical relevance for building a professional career in the research departments of banks, governments, and international organizations such as IMF, World Bank, OECD and ILO.
1st term (November 2018 - December 2018)
● Mathematics (8 ECTS/CFU)
2nd term (January 2019 - April 2019)
● Econometrics (10 ECTS/CFU)
● Microeconomics - Advanced Course (10 ECTS/CFU)
3rd term (April 2019 - July 2019)
● Macroeconomics - Advanced Course (10 ECTS/CFU)
● Research methods (6 ECTS/CFU)
● Public economics \ Corporate finance (8 ECTS/CFU)
4th term (September 2019 - October 2019)
● Project work (8 ECTS/CFU)
The Master is granted upon the completion of all coursework and of a research project by which the candidate shows her/his ability to dominate the topics covered in the coursework undertaken in the first three terms. Typically the research project takes the form of a research paper written under the supervision of a faculty member or of a researcher approved by the Director of the Master. Under certain circumstances, a student may be given the opportunity to undertake an internship on a project that is evaluated by the Director of the Master being consistent with the Master goals. In these cases, the research paper can be substituted by an essay detailing the results achieved during the internship, to be written under the supervision of a faculty member and/or of the external tutor supervising the internship activity.
The emphasis on political/public economics provides an ideal starting point for careers in central banks, governments and international organization such as ILO, IMF, or the World Bank. At the same time, the emphasis on finance paves the way for a career in the private sector in fields such as corporate finance, as well as asset and wealth management.
The Master provides students with all the essential tools and concepts to become accomplished economists. All courses are taught at an advanced level and are designed to build the key competences for successfully dealing with the demands of the best Ph.D. programs in Economics, or for starting a career in leading research institutions.
All scholarships are assigned on a merit basis and will be mostly given to students who apply by the priority deadline. Some scholarships may also target specific geographic regions.
Scholarship value: yet to be determined
Companies tend to employ graduates who have developed awareness to issues of internationalization, who are competent to work in multinational working groups, who can analyze global markets, and those who can deal with the management of major projects. The Global Business Management program aims to endow students with the listed skills so as to enable them to quickly adapt to an international environment, whilst understanding the dynamics, and knowing how to effectively identify solutions to managerial problems in such settings.
The curriculum presents two types of courses: subjects relating to the managerial disciplines (strategy, HRM, accounting), and subjects relating to business issues and problems typically associated with the processes of internationalization of firms and the understanding of economic issues (managerial economics, financial reporting and performance measurement, business and government relations). This is done to balance traditional knowledge of management with the specialization and the development of specific internationalization-oriented skills. The ourses intend to develop the capability to work in different social and cultural contexts, and to review, develop and implement the issues that typically arise when firms go global.
Graduates from the Global Business Management program are exposed to a wide range of career opportunities.
Graduates will have both the technical knowledge and the methodological tools suited to pursue professional and managerial careers in large multinational, domestically owned corporations and international institutions. Yet their learning of abilities of how to deal with international and multicultural issues should also enable them to work within smaller companies, where flexibility and the ability to adapt comes first. Graduates from the program are given the unique opportunity to take advantage of the interaction with guest speakers coming from the most innovative business models
-International human resource management
-Business government relations
-Strategy and international business
-Economics of globalization
-Managerial economics
-Intercultural marketing
-Business ethics
-Accounting
-Corporate finance
-Business analytics
ELECTIVE (three of the following):
-Corporate governance
-Sustainability management
Small business management
-Management of international organization and NGOs
-Economics in the media
-Financial markets and institutions
-Seminar on ethical issues
-Compulsory internship
-Final thesis
The relationship between the students and the professors is an added value at Cattolica’s Piacenza campus. Students are stimulated and encouraged to achieve their goals by showing competitiveness and ambition, preparing them for an ideal array of future job opportunities.
The economy of the province of Piacenza is based on, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), active mainly in manufacturing, services and construction industries, sectors on which the events held at Piacenza Exhibition Center are focused.
The Career Service at Cattolica’s Piacenza campus provides support to students by helping them find relevant internships and placements related to their studies.
During the Global ogram, options to study abroad will be offered. A Study abroad can come in different forms, from Erasmus programs to visiting semesters at the International Partnership of Business schools (IPBS) partner institutions.
Candidates need to satisfy the English language proficiency requirement in order to submit their application.
