A company's financial performance, and its ability to grow and thrive over time, can be assessed through ratio analysis, the basic evaluation tool for asset management, solvency and profitability. Whether you are managing the financial performance of a department, unit, or the organization as a whole, working with these ratios can help identify opportunities and allow you to make adjustments to improve performance.
As you become familiar with asset management ratios such as days sales outstanding and days to turnover, you will be able to apply these techniques in comparing your company's performance against others in the industry and against its own financial history. The ratio analysis tools you learn will help your organization to design and implement initiatives for increased productivity and profitability.
You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:
Steven Carvell joined the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration’s finance faculty in 1986 and is currently a Professor of Finance in the SC Johnson College of Business. Over the past 33 years, he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses such as Advanced Corporate Finance, Capital Budgeting, Financial Strategy, and Investments. Dr. Carvell has also been an active teacher in executive education since 1990, working with almost every major domestic and international hotel company to create custom courses for hotel executives with companies like Hilton, Marriott, InterContinental Hotel Group, Taj Hotels, Jumeirah, Accor, Sol Melia, Le Meridien, Shangri La, and Peninsula. Dr. Carvell has also authored eight distance-learning courses through eCornell that are among the most widely demanded courses offered. He has held academic leadership positions at the School of Hotel Administration since 1999, serving as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2007 to 2016 and the Academic Director of the Pillsbury Institute for Entrepreneurship from 2013 to 2016.
Dr. Carvell has published numerous articles in academic and professional journals, including the Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Portfolio Management, the Harvard Business Review, and the Cornell Quarterly, and he is the co-author of “In the Shadows of Wall Street.” His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Institutional Investor, Financial World, and Leaders. Dr. Carvell has recently finished a major project designed to identify the determinants of hotel demand for U.S. hotels and another on economic and capital market antecedents of venture capital commitments. He is currently working on a project to disaggregate hotel room rates within urban markets and another to determine the risk-return characteristics of hotel room rates in major U.S. markets. Dr. Carvell is also involved with evaluating the effectiveness of hotel company business strategies using strategic benchmarking and economic value-added analysis.
Dr. Carvell has worked for professional money managers in the area of applied strategy in the equity market and served as a consultant to the Presidential Commission on the 1987 stock market crash. His consulting interests include valuation and risk analysis in feasibility studies, hotel debt capacity, strategic benchmarking, and corporate and financial strategy.
