Values

Financial Market & Valuation projects have been a good generator of LPG assignment raw materials. The subjectivity of the explicit and/or implicit impact of the variable inputs on the final valuation creates the perfect setting for hours of 'intellectual' debates and sometimes, senseless display of the power of persuasion.



The sense and sensibility of persuasion is absolutely in play, even though the end-product is so 'mathematical'.



Among the groups, holding constant the factor of previous professional experience in financial valuation, there are those who apparently fight with one another for every single possible reason, and quote every possible 'supportive evidence' from lecture notes and textbooks and/or his/her more 'valuable' work experience in attempts to justify his/her academic argument. Meanwhile some are happy to devote time to more 'productive' activities, which definitions are subjected to the respective objectives of spending $$ and time at INSEAD.



By the way, it's never strange to find a wide range of valuation result for the same case, and different approaches adopted by the professor and by students who have financial valuation work experience.



It must be a coincidence.



During one of the consulting firm presentations this week, (which, coincidentally, the academically focused people have no time to bother about), a director suggests that conventional valuation theories and practices, particularly in the derivation of Beta and Discount Rate, are increasingly inadequate in assessing the real business risks nowadays. Business sustainability, in its own complexity, demands much more sophisticated analysis which does not involve simply quantitative financial datas, but a deeper understanding of the interacting forces in business.



Some of us can't help but wonder, if one is so caught up by every tiny detail in a case, why doesn't he/she enrols into a Master/PhD of Finance instead?