Alternative Investments Courses
Real Estate Capital Markets
Real Estate Capital Markets studies debt and equity secondary markets linked to real estate assets. These markets have become a key way to funding residential and commercial real estate. The recent financial crisis saw a sharp contraction of new issuance in some of these markets, although others, such as the agency MBS market, became even larger and more central to mortgage finance.
Professor Edward Glickman teaches a course on Real Estate Primary Markets. In this semester, this course is transitioning from Principles of Real Estate Finance, which was a single semester survey course embodying aspects of both primary markets (direct investment in property) and secondary markets (investments derived from property). To effect this transition, this semester we will spend additional class time on property level finance and cover capital markets, mortgage backed securities and REITs in less depth. These topics will be covered in greater depth in Real Estate Capital Markets.
Professor James Vickery teaches a course on Real Estate Capital Markets. Real Estate Capital Markets studies debt and equity secondary markets linked to real estate assets. These markets have become a key way to funding residential and commercial real estate. The recent financial crisis saw a sharp contraction of new issuance in some of these markets, although others, such as the agency MBS market, became even larger and more central to mortgage finance.
Professor Leon Metzger teaches a course on Operating a Hedge Fund. The course also analyses how to evaluate the economy as the current events unfolds.
Professor Alexander Ljungqvist teaches a course on New Venture Financing. This course focuses on financing high-growth, high-risk entrepreneurial companies, especially start-up and early-stage ventures. Investing in such ventures is characterized by high degrees of uncertainty and complex asymmetries of information between investors and the entrepreneur. The twin aims of the course are for students to learn how to make investment decisions in these situations (i.e. which opportunities to pursue and which to pass up) and how to structure the terms of the investment in such a way as to cope with uncertainty and reduce conflicts of interest arising due to asymmetries of information.
This course will use the case method to provide a comprehensive overview of private equity finance. Private equity as an asset class (including venture capital, growth investments, distressed investments and leveraged buy-outs) has grown from less than $5 billion of assets under management in 1980 to over $1 trillion in 2012. Its emergence as a significant global asset class has elevated this industry in the public consciousness and led to a debate about its effect on portfolio companies, contribution to systemic risk, and compensation and taxation practices. The dramatic growth of assets under management by private equity firms has also led to a compression in investment returns, making the task of executing successful private equity deals and selecting private equity funds increasingly challenging. The objective of this course is to survey the private equity industry and to provide a deep understanding of the origination, execution, and realization of private equity transactions and of the process of investing in private equity funds. The course will be divided in two parts. The first section will examine the private equity industry from the perspective of private equity firms investing in portfolio companies (referred to as general partners or “GPs”). The second section of the course will examine investing in private equity funds from the perspective of institutional investors in the asset class (the LPs). The focus of this section will be on reviewing the LP universe (pension funds, endowments, fund-of-funds, sovereign wealth funds, and secondary funds), analysing GP investment track records, and understanding terms of fund agreements.
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