As the language of business and the cornerstone of the financial capital markets, accounting provides terminology, frameworks, and concepts with which to understand and analyze the financial consequences of business activities. As these activities have become increasingly complex and global, the task of presenting timely, relevant, and reliable financial information to interested internal and external users has become more challenging. Prerequisites: Restricted to Darden students.

Students who seek careers in investment banking, venture capital, corporate finance, and management consulting will find this course of interest. Although students pursuing these career paths do not need tax expertise, they do need to be able to evaluate critically when to call in the tax experts and what the tax experts are telling them. Therefore this course provides a general understanding of the basic tax consequences of fundamental restructuring strategies and a framework for evaluating the priority that taxes have in these strategies. The course requires students to analyze how tax consequences affect the value of different strategies to the buyer and seller. Understanding the effect of taxes on the value of a deal to the buyer and seller prepares future financial executives and strategic advisors to make better decisions and to be more effective negotiators. Although the course focuses on the tax consequences of restructuring strategies and their valuation implications, it also covers the nontax advantages and disadvantages of these strategies. Most of the course covers U.S. federal income tax issues of restructuring of C corporations, but it also will address pass-through entities. Other topics will be entity formation, taxable asset and stock acquisitions, tax-free asset and stock reorganizations, and divestitures and liquidations. The principal modes of instruction are cases, readings, articles, exercises, and a group project that allows students to investigate a specific deal of personal interest. Prerequisites: Restricted to Darden students.

This course is about blending finance, tax law, accounting, and strategy in the analyses of high-value-added business decisions. This course is not about: tax compliance (the correct way to file tax returns), tax complexity (finding loopholes), tax minimization (beating Uncle Sam), or tax evasion (filing illegal returns). Students are provided with a framework for evaluating the priority that taxes, which directly or indirectly pervade most business transactions, have in business decisions. Students will explore how taxes affect a variety of fundamental business issues such as forming a company, compensating employees, attracting investors, and positioning worldwide operations. While the topics deal primarily with U.S. income taxes, the course's conceptual framework applies irrespective of time and jurisdiction. Students seeking careers in entrepreneurship, management consulting, investment banking, venture capital, or industry, especially general management, corporate finance, or accounting, will find this course of interest. No prior knowledge of taxation is required. The principal modes of instruction are cases, articles, and the group project that enables each student to tailor the course to address an area of personal interest.

This course will cover the rapidly-expanding world of impact investing, focusing on the fundamentals underlying investment strategies for funds (and, to a lesser extent, companies) seeking to both create profit and generate social or environmental impact.

This Darden Worldwide Course aims to develop a deeper understanding of a particular global business environment, what it takes to successfully enter and understand new business contexts, and how to develop a mindset as a leader across different cultures and institutions. The course accomplishes this by immersing students on-site in a new context to study these issues through engagement with local executives, global and local companies and organizations, meeting with government and community leaders, exploring activities of cultural and historical significance, and meeting with peers.

A Darden Independent Study elective includes either case development or a research project to be conducted by an individual student under the direction of a faculty member. Students should secure the agreement of a resident faculty member to supervise their independent study and assign the final grade that is to be based to a significant degree on written evidence of the individual student's accomplishment.