Students undertake an independent research project under the supervision of a faculty member. The aim of the MRes Research Project is for students to design...

Students undertake an independent research project under the supervision of a faculty member. The aim of the MRes Research Project is for students to design and carry out a substantial piece of original research on a topic that is interesting for them. The specific project will be jointly decided by the students and their supervisor.

The research project will result in a thesis of 8,000-10,000 words. As an invaluable practice and preparation for submitting research manuscript for publication, students are required to submit the thesis in the form of a manuscript or an extended proposal submitted to a prestigious journal or a conference.

This is a heavily-weighted module, which reflects the importance of the research project within the overall MRes programme.

This is an advanced module and designed for students who have studied management topics previously. The content will cover complex topics which are not suited to students with no prior knowledge of subjects related to the field.

'“Valuation”— both as that term is applied in determining the defensible worth of companies (‘company valuation’) and also in terms of objective determination of merger success- or failure- from the perspective of the acquiring firm at risk are amongst the most important issues in dynamic business & financial management today. This Module’s COMPANY Valuation parts consider the three leading broad methodologies in use today, with applied consideration of today’s leading approach, Discounted Cash Flow. MERGER valuation’s key issue- determining and applying the most defensible objective methods for first judging and then verifying acquirer’s merger performance, is extremely timely today, given persistent merger/de-merger transaction volume and the provable FACT that ~2/3 of acquisitions disappoint and/or fail. Today’s leading merger valuation methodology is examined in this Module in component detail, along with some of the leading alternatives. Other topics regularly addressed in this Module include M&A cycles, DE-merger evaluation, and merger defence strategies.