Winter School on Finance

Last Sunday, on 4 January, a presentation of the Master's programme in Finance was held for the students of the Winter School of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. At the presentation, students and potential applicants could get acquainted with the content of the Master's programme and ask questions to the head of the programme.

After the presentation, Winter School students could listen to lectures from leading industry experts and their potential teachers. At the first of these lectures, Eugenia Safronova, Head of the Finance Division of Toyota Rus, shared the company's management secrets. "Kaizen" - Toyota's world-famous management approach - can be applied in any industry," the speaker states. Even in the measured work of financiers there is room for order, efficiency and continuous self-improvement.

At the second presentation, Natalia Kozlova, Chief Specialist of PJSC Gazprom, demonstrated to the Winter School students the advantages of modern tools for management decision-making. According to the speaker, information and data in the modern world are the key assets of a company. IT tools that allow to promptly process, visualise and integrate new information into the decision-making process are essential for any modern business. The speaker also told students what to pay close attention to when working with data. Trust in sources, clear and understandable calculation methodology, corrective adjustments for equal comparison with competitors - all these are necessary to create a working data-based decision-making system in a company.

At the final presentation, Egor Vitman, a graduate of the Master's programme in Finance, showed potential applicants how to properly build, test and demonstrate causal models. At the interactive presentation, students were shown modern approaches to presenting causal relationships and were told about the main mistakes made by researchers and analysts who neglect these approaches. Finally, the students, together with the lecturer, took apart a published study in the field of finance and identified the mistakes made in it. After the presentation, Egor shared with potential applicants his impressions of studying at the Master's programme, answered questions and gave advice on admission and studying on the programme.