Rick Rosas

I chose this programme because I wanted to study at LSE. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone, and if I’d gone to an American university I would have been around people just like me. Being in London for a week and being completely removed from the States at one of the top institutions in the world was amazing.

The lecturers used case studies to give context to everything we learned, so we could understand the information from different perspectives. It was very effective. My goal for the programme was to deepen my understanding of finance, and it’s definitely done that. I wanted to understand M&A valuation and how to look at various models of value in companies. I now know more about value methodologies which in turn has helped me to understand transfer pricing. That’s crucial for the work that I do for multinational companies, so it’s been extremely valuable.

The diversity and the breadth of my class was refreshing. Before we even started on the programme content, I knew I would have an incredible experience. We had participants from all over the world – from the UK, the US and from all over Western Europe, South America and Asia. It was amazing to exchange views and experiences with them for a whole week. They were all very bright and accomplished people from diverse fields. We had consultants, we had bankers, we had people who just came to learn more about finance. The programme was very broad and relevant to people of all backgrounds.

I’ve been able to leverage my learning from the programme already. Because there’s so much activity in valuation and valuation methodologies at my job, just from an accounting perspective, it’s been worth the investment. I’m able to use what I learned in the normal course of business a lot, especially the valuation methodologies and the underlying assumptions that go into them, the variables that are taken into consideration, and why. Because I come from a quantitative background that’s part of my world, but it was just as valuable for the rest of the class because we saw all the contextual aspects of what the numbers represent and how to use them.