Financial Acumen

Most of my working experience have been mostly on a technical and project management path until eight years ago when I was moved to another subsidiary and here the job is more business focused as well as technical. Here, I had to take decisions based on sound business practices revolving around profit, sustainability, planning and budgeting based on revenue and other indices. It has been a wonderful learning process.   

A couple of years ago, I moved to Management, and I realized that I had to improve my skillset as the sayings go “the reward for hard work is more work” and “to whom much is given, more is expected”. That is one of the reasons I knew that I had to make time to embark on my MBA journey.

One of the first lectures I attended was the Corporate Financial Accounting (CFA)course by Professor Akintola Owolabi. I have seen a few posts extolling his humor, beautiful teaching methods and his candor so I know how well he is admired by almost everyone he has taught in Lagos Business school.

Corporate Financial Accounting opened my eyes to how CEO’s and Executives should think when running companies and the research investors need to make before making investment decisions. The few cases we investigated and discussed as a class opened my eyes to how decipher a company’s financial statement to ascertain that while it may look good on paper, trouble may be lurking underneath.

I was most intrigued by a case we studied, that of Union Bank which was on the verge of crashing on a Friday but by Monday had recapitalized with a shareholder restructuring. An analysis of the capitalization showed that it far exceeded what it needed to stay afloat and a few years down the line, they were performing poorer than their peers and heavily in debt.

I also learnt a lot about how businesses handle their finances and the golden rule for corporate accounting Asset = Liability + Equity and how to distinguish what constitutes what. The course has been an eye opener.

I was almost confused with the definition of Debit and Credit in the course as a lay man, my idea of debit was to deduct. Professor Owolabi opened our eyes to look at different books in the banking system. The bank’s book and the customer’s book as he taught us the T accounting system with the debit and credit as it relates to the golden rule in accounting.

The applications to my learning will go beyond my job which is the primary reason I started the MBA; I am planning to initiate a startup by next year and the learnings are already invaluable in the planning stage of the startup. While relying on an accountant to handle the finances, I will have a birds-eye view to all aspects of the business.

I am still learning, and I have amazing people with accounting background in my group and class to guide me as I navigate this course.

#MEMBA11