Subject: class speaker
vincent ,
we met last year when you were visiting the university , and talking
primarily with our finance faculty . as you may have heard , i tried to call
to talk with you about the possiblity of a guest speaker in my class on real
options from your group at enron . naturally , i would be delighted if you
could speak , but i could also appreciate the possibility that someone else
might also be a good choice .
i have attached a copy of the course syllabus for your information .
this is the first time this course has been offered at ut , and i was
motivated to do so because of the " buzz " regarding the topic in industry . i
have about 30 mba students in the class , many of whom were in the energy
finance classes offered by sheridan titman and ehud ronn ( both of whom have
been very supportive of the development of this class ) . my own background
is decision analysis rather than finance , so i tend to approach the topic
with that perspective . as you can see , i have covered both traditional
decison analysis topics and a review of the options literature . at the
present time , i don ' t think there is a really complete textbook that fits
the course at the mba level , so i ' ve tried to focus on how to do things in
practice , and have provided software ( dpl , spreadsheets , @ risk , etc ) as
tools for the students to use .
the course is scheduled on thursday afternoons from 3 : 30 to 6 : 30 ,
which is a time that i chose to make possible the participation of some
executive mba students from houston ( 3 are participating ) . i look forward
to hearing from you about the possiblity of a speaker , or any other
suggestions that you might have .
james s . dyer
fondren centennial chair in business
department of management science and information systems
cba 5 . 202
the university of texas at austin
austin , texas 78712 - 1175
email : j . dyer @ bus . utexas . edu
telephone : 512 - 471 - 5278
fax : 512 - 471 - 0587