Introduction to Law and to Finance

This course provides sufficient knowledge of the main ideas and methods used in law and finance for students (whose academic background is very likely to lie either in Law or in Finance but not in both), to proceed with both the Law-based and the Finance-based courses making up the remainder of the MSc degree. In Finance, the course aims to present the main ideas and methods in mathematics that are used in financial analysis. The emphasis throughout is on the applications of the mathematical concepts to finance. In Law, the course provides the foundations of legal knowledge necessary for those students with no knowledge of law as well as an introduction to the common law for those students with a civilian law qualification. The emphasis is on the fundamental commercial subjects.

Aims & Objectives

When you have completed the study of this course and its readings you will be able to:

Demonstrate the importance of law as a component of vibrant and successful markets, particularly financial markets

Analyse the importance of the law of contracts and the law of non-contractual liability for the smooth functioning of financial markets

Discuss the basic principles, sources and methods of law

Identify and discuss the points of contact between law and market behaviour of investors, banks, corporations and other players in national and international financial markets

Use basic mathematical formulas that are used in financial decisions

Discuss concepts of returns, risk, and time, which underpin rational financial decisions and interact to determine prices of financial securities

Explain how returns, risk, and time are represented by mathematical formulas used in finance

Discuss how concepts of probability relate to risk and how they are represented by statistical formulas used in finance

Resources

Students receive a looseleaf binder containing eight ‘course units’; these texts are carefully structured to provide the main teaching and are equivalent to traditional course lectures, defining and exploring the main concepts and issues, locating these within current debate and introducing and linking the further assigned readings. Two assignments (to be marked by your CeFiMS tutors), and a specimen examination paper are also included within the student pack, along with the following:

Textbooks:

T.H. Wonnacott and R.J. Wonnacott, Introductory Statistics for Business and Economics, Fourth edition, 1990, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN047161517X.

Mike Rosser, Basic Mathematics for Economics, Second edition, 2003, Routledge, ISBN0415267846.

David Barker and Colin Padfield, Law Made Simple, Eleventh edition, 2002, Made Simple Books/Elsevier Science, ISBN0750654058.

James A. Holland and Julian S. Webb, Learning Legal Rules, Fifth edition, 2003, Oxford University Press, ISBN0199254826.

Readings:

A compilation of further readings: recently published articles or seminal writings which augment and illustrate the main text.

Course Timetable:

This shows the linkage between the various components of the course and indicates the schedule for reading the texts, submitting assignments, etc.

Course Content

Introduction to Law and Legal Method

Functions of law in society
Jurisdictions of the world and "legal families"
Sources of English law
Fundamentals of English contract law
Fundamentals of English property law

Introduction to Finance

Introduction to financial analysis
Functions and graphs
Solving equations
Exponential and natural logarithms, rates of growth
Introduction to probability theory
Partial differentiation and constrained optimisation
Applications to financial analysis

Tuition & Assessment

One two-hour examination and two assessed pieces of written coursework in each module. Each course module will count for 10% of the total mark. Of this 10%, the examination will count for 70% and the coursework for 30%.

Individual Professional Courses – IPC

Introduction to Law and to Finance [FFL101]

Introduction