The Focus on Corporate Finance 2025
Registering for The Focus on Corporate Finance at CPD Fest 2025 couldn’t be more straightforward. We have three packages for you to choose from – 8 hours, 16 hours and 24 hours of CPD – allowing you to customise the event to your own specific needs. Once purchased, pick ‘n’ mix the topics of most interest and relevance to you from any of the sessions running across the week of CPD Fest 2025.
CPD Fest Packages:
The 12 Gifts Of CPD Fest
Over the coming weeks we are going to give you advance access to hugely valuable extracts from the note packs The CPD Fest & The Essential Advisors’ Mix.
With The 12 Gifts of CPD Fest you will get guides, financial statements, checklists, tools, tax papers, letters of engagement and reports all the way up to and including the kitchen sink!
Registration for The 12 Gifts Of CPD Fest is free, quick and straight forward and you can do so here:
Event Details:
Session 1: Prospects for International Equities - Don’t Rule out a Bear Market!
Time: 09:00 – 10:40
Speaker: Cormac Lucey – Finance Lecturer & Economics Columnist
Cormac Lucey will cover the following topics during this webinar:
- Recession warning signals that have been reliable in the past
- What those signals are saying now
- What valuation levels now indicate
- Is there a bubble in Artificial Intelligence?
- Global equity market prospects
- Implications for Ireland
Course level: Intermediate
Session 2: Key Aspects of Corporate Finance You May Not Know
Time: 11:00 – 12:40
Speaker: Cormac Lucey – Finance Lecturer & Economics Columnist
In this session Cormac Lucey will cover the following topics:
- The most important measure of a company’s financial performance
- How it varies by industry sector
- What it means for investor returns
- Why it’s more important than current measures of a company’s valuation
- Using this variable, where might there opportunities in today’s global equity market?
Course level: Intermediate
Session 3: The Shifting Geopolitical and Geoeconomic Reality of Capital Markets
Time: 13:40 – 15:20
Speaker: Constantin Gurdgiev – Associate Professor of Finance
Today’s deglobalized world of geoeconomic and geopolitical competition between superpowers is shaping the re-distribution flows of financial and economic resources. As the U.S. rapidly onshores its productive capacity into the G7+ realm of advanced economies, China and Russia are drawing up national security, and geopolitical bridges while strengthening trade and financial links within the BRICS+ alliance.
Traditional economic models suggest that the end game of these processes will be lower cost of capital, lower investment, slower economic growth, and shallower innovation and productivity growth in the demographically challenged West. This Japanification view of the future, however, is often offset by the references to new technological frontiers (AI, quantum computing, energy transitions, etc.) that promise to remove constraints of aging demographics and ossified institutions, unleashing a new era of growth and progress in the West.
At this moment in time, therefore, Western model of economic development offers us two striking alternatives: (1) stagnation as the G7+ awaits for the demographic pyramid in the emerging markets to follow – with a lag – the Western demographic trends; and (2) technology-anchored escape from stagnation that removes demographic constraints on growth and investment. The next 5-10 years in the global investment markets will reflect the immense uncertainties that the choice between these two alternatives implies for future returns.
Buckle your seatbelts. It is likely to be a rough ride.
Session 4: Preparing Your Business For Sale and Executing The Transaction 2024
Time: 15:40 – 17:20
Speaker: Conor Grimes – Connext Partners
This course is designed to give industry and practice accountants an overview of preparing a business for sale and the transaction process once the business is ready to go to market
In this session Conor Grimes will cover the following topics;
- Enterprise Value – An overview
- Equity adjustment methodology – Lockbox and Completion Accounts
- Cash, Cash like items
- Debt, Debt-like items
- Working Capital – adjustments and setting the target
- Other considerations
- Case Studies
By attending this session, attendees will have a better understanding of the business sale process which will be of great benefit to them if they are operating in a business that is preparing for sale.
This session will be of most interest to, Business Owners, Tax Advisors, Industry Accountants, Practice Accountants
Course level: Foundation / Intermediate
CPD Course Speakers
Cormac Lucey – Finance Lecturer & Economics Columnist
Cormac Lucey teaches finance, at post-graduate level, at the IMI, UCD, TCD and Chartered Accountants Ireland.
He is also a commentator on economic and current affairs both on broadcast media and through his weekly columns with The Sunday Times (Irish edition) and The Times (Ireland).
And he is chairman of the Hibernia Forum, an independent think-tank which promotes the free market, individual liberty and responsible and prudent government.
He served as a special adviser to Michael McDowell when he was Tánaiste (Irish deputy prime minister) between 2002 and 2007. Cormac previously worked both in industry and in corporate finance in both Ireland in Germany.
Constantin Gurdgiev - Associate Professor of Finance
Constantin Gurdgiev is the Associate Professor of Finance with Monfort College of Business, University of Northern Colorado (USA), Visiting Assistant Professor at the Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, and principal at the Macroview.eu – a service specializing in geopolitical and geoeconomics risks and uncertainty advisory. Professor Gurdgiev serves as a Co-founder and Chairperson of the Board at the Irish Mortgage Holders Organization https://www.mortgageholders.ie/, and a Co-founder, Board Member and Member of the Risk and Audit Committee at iCare Housing https://icarehousing.ie/. In his spare time, Constantin is an avid fly fisherman, mountaineer and forager across the great outdoors of the Western United States, Dolomites and Alps.
Conor Grimes - Connext Partners
Conor is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland and has several years of experience working in corporate finance roles with international professional service firms. Separately, he has also worked in Head of Finance roles in industry and as such is uniquely placed in understanding client’s needs and advising them through a transaction process.
Outside of Connext Partners, Conor is a Non-Executive Director and chair of the finance committee of Tuath, one of Ireland’s largest Approved Housing Bodies.
Dara Kelly - Grant Thornton
Dara joined Grant Thornton in 2005 as part of the advisory team. He has extensive experience in advisory services, and was admitted to the Partnership in 2016.
From 2013 to 2016, Dara was based in New York where he led the Grant Thornton . The role involved assisting US corporations execute development strategies into European markets. During his three years in New York, Dara also worked closely with the US transaction services team on significant buy side transactions for large private equity clients and investment banks.
On his return to Ireland, Dara took up the lead of the Irish firm’s China/Hong Kong Business Group.
Prior to 2013, Dara worked in the Irish advisory team where he gained valuable experience working on a number of complex corporate finance assignments including MBO’s, bank financing/re-financing, valuations and fund raisings.
His main area of expertise is in corporate finance, transaction services and corporate restructuring and he has extensive experience in providing strategic advice to leading Irish corporates and financial institutions.
Dara’s skill set also incorporates experience from the provision of International Business Reviews, strategic option papers and exit strategies to both accelerated and controlled mergers and acquisitions, obtaining maximum value for his clients.
The Focus on Corporate Finance 2025 is brought to you in association with:
