Back to business school!

On May 1, my next course at the Open University Business School (OUBS) started officially. It is called ‘B821 – Financial Strategy’ and is one of the ‘electives’ of stage 2 of the studies towards the MBA degree. I am about half way through my MBA program now, with two 6-months electives (one of which is B821) and a one-year closing project (‘MAD – Making a Difference’) left. Phew.

The OUBS Masters program is 90% distance-based learning, with excellent course materials, online collaboration and the support of local tutor groups. It looks like there aren’t enough students in Hamburg, so I’ll have to travel to Frankfurt for my tutorials. Well, it will probably be worth the ride.

The good news this time: I am through more than half of the course materials already, as I had the opportunity to start studying early. I hope this will give me the needed flexibility as I’ll soon have to combine work, studies and my family.

So far, the course is really interesting and a bit easier to digest than I thought. The maths in there are pretty straightforward. The bigger issue is putting the right numbers into the formulas and then making sense of it afterwards.

I am currently working on my first assignment which is about Ryanair, and deals with financial ratio analysis and forecasting based on their 2009 Annual Report. It is really interesting to dig into Ryanair’s business model and numbers, and put this into perspective with the current business climate and the situation in the airline industry.

I’ll keep you posted…

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