Academics > MBA
STRT-447 Family Enterprises: Issues and Solutions (Winter quarter)
The intent of the course is to master and extend state of the art thinking on family firm success factors and continuity across generations. The course is intended primarily for students from business-owning families, whether they plan to work in the business or not. The course is also appropriate for families who invest or conduct philanthropic activities together. Topics range from generational transition to family dynamics to strategic differentiators of family firms. Students engage in a variety of learning formats including live case discussions, guest speakers, a simulation an exploration of their family enterprise and an investigation of personal management style. The class incorporates latest business trends and their impact in the family firm context.
FINC-477 Global Entrepreneurial Finance
Global Entrepreneurial Finance is designed to intersect three areas of interest:
- (A) Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity including Entrepreneurial Buyouts
- (B) Family and Closely-Held Firms
- (C) International Finance with special emphasis on cross-border valuation and access to finance
An overreaching insight of this course is that the notions of risk and reward are as important in privately-held as in publicly held firms. In privately-held firms and closely-held firms, however, entrepreneurs and financiers are often forced to make assumptions based on incomplete data. The course will provide you with the tools necessary to value companies domiciled in countries around the world. The aim of the course is for students to understand the motivations, decision processes, transaction execution, and valuation consequences of financial, business, and organizational restructuring done by buyouts, family firms and closely-held firms in an international context. The course facilitates developing the ability to plan, evaluate, and execute transactions using financial modeling and quantitative techniques. The course does not deal with venture capital, early-stage financing or entrepreneurship concepts.
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FINC-948-0 Keeping it all in the Family: Growing, Financing, and Managing Family Firms
Most companies around the world are owned or controlled by their founding families. The subject of the course is these firms in their different forms: private family firms, closely held firms, family offices and family investment offices. The course explores the unique finance, legal, governance and management issues faced by family firms, and ways in which these issues can be addressed. The course provides students interested in founding, owning, managing, investing in, or partnering with such firms with a framework for analyzing how family ownership and control affect value, and how this value is created and allocated to the various stakeholders of the firm. The course specifically focuses on the financial, legal and corporate governance aspects of family control and their managerial implications.
The topics in the course include: family ownership, control and management affecting firm-value; legal standards of valuation (fair value vs. fair market value); shareholder agreements and bylaws; control-enhancing mechanisms, including dual-stock structures, pyramidal structures, board representation; families partnering with strategic investors, financial investors, employers and public shareholders; legal and governance structures; family succession planning, estate planning (gifts, wills, trusts and estates); formulating optimal plans for transferring control, and the organizational design of family offices and family investment offices.
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Family Enterprise Club (FEC)
The student-run Family Enterprise Club aims to develop the awareness of and interest in the "Family Enterprise" dimension of business within and beyond the Kellogg Community. The Kellogg Family Enterprise Club activities include consulting, support, social events, keynote speakers, networking, and access to relevant materials, all of which represent the Club's foundations.
Click here for the FEC website on Kellogg CampusGroups.
Mentoring Circles
The John L. Ward Center for Family Enterprises (CFE) is pleased to offer family business students the opportunity to engage in meaningful small group discussions called mentoring circles. The mentoring circles are guided by CFE alumni and veteran family business leaders. These facilitators are leaders in their professions who willingly share their knowledge and experience to enrich the lives of family business students. All Kellogg students from a family enterprise are encouraged to participate.
The groups are limited in size (3-5 students to 1 mentor), so that all participants will have the opportunity to discuss, dissect, contribute, and learn. The informality of the gatherings further contributes to rich and robust discussions. Groups will be sorted by topical interests and will meet at least 3 times over the course of the quarter.
