Ivan Brick

Ivan Brick High Finance, Brick by Brick

Professor Ivan Brick recently met a former student who said, "I just closed a multi-million dollar deal, and I used your tools to evaluate the company."

Understanding cash flow and the relationship between risk and value are key concepts, but so are the more qualitative aspects of financial decision-making.  "Anyone with a computer can do analysis;  the question is whether a manager grasps what's behind the numbers."

Dr. Brick, chair of the Finance and Economics departments, was largely instrumental in creating the new Masters Program in Quantitative Finance.  Through his efforts, RBS has a new state-of-the-art real-time trading room to analyze financial markets.  Only a handful of universities in the US possess a similar facility.

His first love is still research, but he hasn't forgotten the importance of translating academic theory into real-world practice. In the EMBA program, Prof. Brick teaches a very highly regarded elective on Advanced Financial Management.

His case-based approach incorporates a case on the biotech sector in which the company is thinking about selling its consumer products division.  How should it determine the offer price?  And what would be the optimal method of financing this investment from the buyer's perspective?

In addition to the pure technical valuation, his course differs from  most advanced finance courses in that Prof. Brick also introduces strategic factors that influence the final decision.  Factors such as the diversification of the firm's own portfolio, the agenda of the Board of Directors, cash flows, dividend polices and liquidity ratios are introduced in the analysis.  He also explores if the company should divest a division to allow a greater focus on its primary comparative advantage.

Prof. Brick has also authored a case that focuses on business mergers.  How does one analyze merger offers?  He interfaces finance with financial accounting to discuss how accounting statements and different components of accounting entries can indeed be analyzed to forecast future cash flows.

A student view of Brick:

"He is the kind of professor who doesn't take himself too seriously, but takes what he is teaching very seriously.  He caused us to respect finance not by intimidating us with its power, but by seducing us with its value."