Course Content

Core Courses

• ACCT7960 Interpreting Financial and Accounting Information: This course aims to develop students’ knowledge and skills of accounting and finance to interpret financial and accounting information that provide advice to companies’ board in developing strategy and making decision.
• ACCT7780 Corporate Law and Compliance: This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the fundamental principles of company law and compliance including, the regulatory framework for Hong Kong and non-Hong Kong company, formation of Hong Kong company, records and reporting, equity and debt financing, legal and governance duties of the board of directors and company secretary, member rights and general meeting, takeover and restructuring, receivership and liquidation (including corporate rescue). The focus of the course is Hong Kong company law but laws of other jurisdictions will be covered if they are relevant.
• ACCT7810 Securities Regulation: This course articulates to students the regulatory framework for listed companies with a special focus on the listing regimes, compliance with the Listing Rules and the codes on takeovers and related matters, the protection of minority shareholders, and also the roles of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong and the Securities and Futures Commission as the major regulators. The rise of shareholder activism and its impact on corporate governance will be explored. The course will focus on securities regulations of Hong Kong but where appropriate securities regulation of other major jurisdictions will also be discussed.
• MGNT7740 Strategic Management: The effective board of directors sets a competitive and sustainable corporate strategy to achieve the company’s objectives, and also reviews it regularly for its validity and takes necessary remedial action. The board must decide on where and how to create competitive advantages to secure sustainable market positions and make sure that the company has the necessary resources for these purposes. This course enables students to determine a company’s competitive position, identify managerial and structural issues, formulate and evaluate plans of action from the boardroom perspective.
• ACCT7790 Corporate Governance: The effectiveness of a board of directors depends on its composition, structure, dynamics and process. This course aims to enable students to (1) understand the nature, functions and operations of a board of directors and its committees; (2) study the best governance practices from leading jurisdictions; and (3) advise directors on making strategy, monitoring corporate performance and implementing risk management, and developing corporate sustainability.
• ACCT7970 Board Dynamics: The effectiveness of a board of directors depends on its composition, structure, dynamics and process.The aim of this course is to provide the essential knowledge, understanding and skills needed for the director, company secretary and governance professional to strengthen boardroom performance by developing appropriate culture and enabling both effective individual behaviours and group processes.
• ACCT7820 Taxation: This course aims to introduce students the principles and administration of the income tax system of Hong Kong.  This course discusses the general principles of taxation, property tax, salaries tax, profits tax, depreciation allowances, and personal assessment. It also provides students with basics of stamp duty.  A brief introduction of general tax planning and Mainland China taxation system is also included.
• ACCT7980 Risk Management: The aim of this course is for students to develop and extend their understanding of the discipline of risk management, including how risk management links to compliance management and complements effective corporate governance in organisations. Students will explore the board’s role in terms of risk management, as well as the people, processes and techniques that can be used to support the board and ensure the effective assessment, monitoring and control of risk at all levels of an organisation.

Elective Courses

• ACCT7840 Financial Regulations and Crimes: This course aims to cover key issues and the applicable laws and regulations for financial markets. It will include an overview of the financial regulatory framework, especially dealing with selective conduct compliance requirements. It will also provide the foundations for the study of financial crimes including anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing, fraud, as well as corruption in the Hong Kong context. Furthermore, this course will include ongoing regulatory debate on fintech in Hong Kong. Lastly, develop a clear understanding of the value of a robust compliance management framework.
• ACCT7950 Investment Governance: The word “governance” is increasingly recognised and written about in modern times. Global governance is a question that exercises the minds of national governments when attending multilateral meetings on subjects ranging from trade to climate change. Effective corporate governance is what boards of directors attempt to provide for the corporations they represent and is the standard to which investors and activists increasingly hold them. In this course, we focus our attention on the rapidly growing field of investment governance. Investment governance refers to the effective use of resources—people, policies, processes, and systems—by a governing agent seeking to fulfill a fiduciary duty to the principals (the beneficiaries) in addressing an underlying investment challenge as an enabler of good stewardship. For this reason it should, in our view, be of interest to all fiduciaries, no matter the size of the pool of assets or the nature of the beneficiaries. The purpose of this course is thus to share with the key players in investment governance (fiduciaries, compliance officers, asset managers and investment managers) the strategies that may help fulfil the duties to their beneficiaries and stakeholders.
• ACCT7830 Risk, Compliance and Corporate Social Responsibility: This course aims to provide students with the foundations for identifying, establishing and developing an organisation’s regulatory risk, ESG obligations of listed entities, and establishing a compliance framework. To achieve this, the course will analyse current CSR and regulatory theories, international CSR benchmaks, as well as ESG obligations of listed entities listed in Hong Kong. Furthermore, this module will take a risk management perspective in analysing the disclosure obligations and reporting requirements of listed entities in Hong Kong. 
• ACCT7930 Strategic Corporate Communications: Recognizing communication as a vital management function, Strategic Corporate Communications is designed to help directors and senior management lead, motivate, persuade and inform key internal and external audiences in order to achieve the goals of their organizations. The course encompasses key principles of corporate communication, investor relations, and crisis communication, and integrates the insights of practitioners with the major communication theories. Students will gain from this course practical knowledge of corporate communication in a contemporary society.
• FIN7750 Financial Technology (FinTech): The world of global finance, banking and financial services is changing rapidly with the emergence of financial technologies, commonly referred to as FinTech. FinTech is also the term which encompasses the disruption of traditional functions: payments, capital raising, remittances, consumer banking, B2B banking and much more. Over the last few years, FinTech has allowed for new mediums of finance, from micro-payments over mobile apps, P2P lending and spending integrated into social media, new electronic methods of institutions trade, through to robo-advisors helping to make decisions about investment portfolios to name a few. This course provides students with the latest practical knowledge on FinTech, enabling students to understand the underlying reasons of why a change was needed, and through industry case studies, understand how disruptive technologies have helped to create a new ecosystem. We are only at the early stages of FinTech, thus students will need to prepare themselves with a deeper understanding of Financial Technology.
• ACCT7760 International Taxation: The course introduces the students to the international aspects of income tax law. It provides a comprehensive overview of the global landscape of income tax law and policy. The course discusses the taxation of resident individuals and legal entities on income arising in foreign countries and the taxation of non-residents on income arising or sourced in the country. It also covers the current international tax regime operating in selected jurisdictions, including Hong Kong and Mainland China. 
• ACCT7170 Project: The objective of this project is to enable students to apply their knowledge and skills learned from the programme to enhance their competence in corporate governance and directorship through investigation and analysis for a real problem. Students may choose an individual or a group project. Those who choose a group project are expected to form a group of not more than three students to work together in the project. Students may benefit from working on the project in a team through improving their interpersonal, leadership, team work, and communication skills. Students may, for some reasons such as confidentiality of their company data, and personal work style and schedule, prefer to work on their own. A supervisor will be assigned to each student to help the student finish the project.
• COMM7060 Issues in Corporate Communication introduces graduate-level critical thinking about the integrated nature of internal and external communications in the contemporary organization. Asian and western organizational theories and the role communication plays within them are offered at the outset. Students then explore a variety of organizational structures and the kinds and volumes of information that flow in all directions bringing life to the organization. A major focus of the subject is on managerial communication in the Asian organization. Students investigate the importance of communication in carrying out motivation, leadership, team-building and the notions of quality and organizational change. The fundamental relationships of the organization to its external and internal environments and audiences are carefully observed with emphases on understanding, developing and applying communication strategies that attend to competitive advantages, organizational image and “handling issues”, crises and opportunities. The increasing impact of information technology on organizational communication is also assessed with regard to re-engineering, quality management and integrated marketing communication. The notion followed is that tomorrow’s business paradigm is not today’s business as usual.
• COMM7250 Strategic Public Relations & Crisis Management will not only examine communication in crises but show what we can do to prevent or minimize the impacts of such crises. Important concepts of strategic management of public relations, issues management, risk communication, activism, crisis communication principles and crisis communication in both traditional and new media will be covered. Local and overseas cases will be incorporated to teach students how to deal with crises in real situations. Different methods and approaches for resolving different types of crisis will be discussed, showing how for example prevention and resolution of a natural crisis and a confrontational crisis should be different, with the former emphasizing in the region’s infrastructure and the latter highlighting the human context of a conflict. As a result, students will not only study and analyze the communication tools for a crisis but discuss an organization’s management. This subject is a multiple-disciplinary course that helps students integrate the knowledge from communication, sociology, psychology and management in dealing crises with complicated contexts.