Course content
Double Degree Data & Finance X-HEC
The program offers you a perfect balance of theory and practice. Elective courses, Certificates and numerous academic opportunities throughout the program allow you to customize the curriculum to your needs and aspirations

Olivier Bossard
Objectives
The key aim of the teaching in this Double Degree is to provide students with the tools needed to solve real problems, using structured and unstructured data masses, teaching them to ask the ‘right’ questions (both from statistics, ‘business’ and finance perspectives) and to use the appropriate mathematical and IT tools, and methodology to answer these questions.
The first year teaching focuses largely on the data produced by ‘real-life’ cases obtained in association with the program’s industrial partners. Students will learn how to perform a complete data analysis, from data manipulation, exploration, and visualization to analysis with powerful machine learning methods and to communicate and deploy their solution. Students can also benefit from refresher courses in probability and mathematical foundations of data science.
- Mathematical foundations of data science
- Statistics with R
- Regression
- Machine Learning I and II
- Deep Learning and Optimization
- Python for data science
- Financial markets
- Optimization / Deep Learning
- Numerical processing of financial data
- Deep learning in finance
- Languages
- Human science
- Sport
A 4-month compulsory internship within a company in a data-related sector, including investment banks (BNP-Paribas, BPCE), hedge funds and firms such as Microsoft, Facebook, Orange, Capgemini.
Learn & develop your skills in AI & Datascience
Meet other students,DataScientists and professionals from companies who will coach you
Contribute to solve real issues for companies and society
Superhands-on experience to highlighting your CV
Compete with the best students in a good spirit
Get the chance to spend a day into of the corporate donors office
During this year, students will take Accelerated Tracks.
These tracks are designed for students who have not yet been exposed to business, finance or accounting terminology and concepts (e.g. engineering, mathematics or econometrics majors).
While the first semester is dedicated to core and advanced core courses, the second semester allows students to choose from a concentration of electives as well as a wide variety of free electives.
- Soft skills seminar
- Ethics seminar
- Probability and statistics refresher
- Behavioral and Sustainable Finance
- Introduction to finance
- Corporate finance
- Financial accounting and reporting
- Macroeconomics
- Economics of Financial Regulation
- Fixed income and MM
- Securities markets
- Capital markets specialization courses:
- Financiial engineering
- Quantitative asset management
- Empirical methods in finance
- Corporate finance specialization courses:
- Corporate restructuring
- Derivatives
- Financial modeling
You will be enrolled automatically in the Data & Finance Concentration:
- Introduction to Data Science & AI for Managers
- Data analysis in finance
- Regulation & Policy of Digital Finance
- Algorithms, Data, and Trading
- Blockchain
You may also need to choose the from the free electives/concentrations listed below to reach the required number of credits. You can choose them only if there are available seats and if the schedule doesn’t conflict with your Data & Finance concentration courses.
Free electives
- Alternative investments
- Advanced international finance
- Bond portfolio management
- Credit risk & turnaround of distressed companies
- Energy and finance
- Energy markets
- Infrastructure and real assets
- Macroeconomics of crises economies
- Numerical analysis
- Real estate foundations
- Sustainable & responsible investing
Corporate investment & financing policy concentration
Advanced financial accounting
Structured finance: a tool for corporates & investment funds
Equity capital markets
Advanced venture capital
Advanced corporate finance
Corporate restructuring concentration
Mergers & acquisitions
LBO structuring and modeling in practice
Corporate finance live
The private equity ecosystem: meet the actors
Advanced Corporate Finance
Corporate strategy concentration
Corporate strategy & financial institutions
Topics in valuation
Behavioral strategy
Financial dimensions of strategic decisions
Strategies for international expansion
Financial engineering concentration
Stochastic processes
Modeling techniques for financial engineering
Origination of structured products
FX derivatives trading
Exotic products and structuring
At the beginning of September, students have the opportunity to go on a study trip to London. The trip offers students plenty of networking opportunities, conferences and team building exercises. Many networking events are organized with HEC Alumni’s UK branch - one of the largest in the world, with numerous active members working in the City.
The 2021-2022 London study trip included company events with:
- Bank of America - Merrill Lynch
- Barclays
- BNP Paribas
- Blackstone
- Boussard & Gavaudan
- Commerzbank
- Crédit Agricole
- Exane
- Goldman Sachs
- HSBC
- Morgan Stanley
- Société Générale CIB
- Thomson Reuters
- Unicredit...
PROGRAM FACULTY
HEC Paris and École Polytechnique both boast world-class faculty.
HEC Paris’ permanent faculty all come from the world’s leading research universities such as Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, Yale, etc. They regularly share their work in top academic journals and international conferences. 64% are non-French and represent 29 different nationalities.
École Polytechnique has 670 full-time faculty, including 39% of international.
Evolve in a Dynamic Research Ecosystem
Pushing the frontier of knowledge is a shared priority between HEC Paris and École Polytechnique. Both institutions have created specialized research units in order to provide major interdisciplinary contributions to management, innovation, science, technology, and society. École Polytechnique has for example 22 joint laboratories with the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) or other research institutions, such as the CEA, INRIA, INSERM, Université Paris-Sud, ENSTA ParisTech and UPMC.
HEC Paris has launched chairs with major companies on contemporary issues such as leadership, innovation, and sustainability, but also interdisciplinary research centers:
- the Society and Organizations Center, which aims at offering new ways of understanding the world and helping organizations to reconcile economic priorities with a new series of imperatives
- the Entrepreneurship Center, which promotes entrepreneurship through innovative HEC Paris programs, start-ups support, academic and business partnerships
- the Digital Transformation Center, which addresses the challenges of digital transformation, and brings together businesses and students to work directly on such issues

Faculty
The HEC Paris faculty consists of over 160 professors, comprising more than 25 different nationalities, with Ph.D.’s from leading universities across the world. They work in all major areas of economics and management.
Find out more