Affiliated Faculty Members

During the last decade, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has consistently awarded the School its top ranking in its Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). This ranking shows that the majority of the research produced by London Business School faculty members is regarded as "world class" and reflects our commitment to academic excellence in research. Please click on the links to access the research papers of the faculty members associated with the Private Equity Institute.

Professor Eli Talmor is Founder and Chairman of the Private Equity Institute. His research focus is in the corporate governance of venture-backed companies, venture capital contracts, the economics of Private Equity.

Professor Viral Acharya is Academic Director of the Institute. He has recently been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship for 19 months to work on "Private Equity and Corporate Governance". This seminal piece of research, done in collaboration with McKinsey & Co, tests the evidence of value creation in Private Equity owned companies within UK and Europe and includes an attribution analysis of outperformance or alpha. The findings will be published in May 2008. In addition to Private Equity Professor Acharya's expertise lies in banking, corporate finance, asset pricing with liquidity risk, valuation of corporate debt and credit derivatives. He has recently been awarded the Houblon-Norman Fellowship by the Bank of England to work on a project entitled "Efficiancy on Inter-Bank Liquidity Markets and the Role of Central Banks".

Professor Shivakumar is an academic member of the Institute's Board. Professor Shivakumar's research interests include comparative accounting patterns in public and private companies and earnings quality among private companies.

Dr Florin Vasvari's interest and expertise is the accounting information within debt markets with an emphasis on fair value reporting for financial instruments and associated risk disclosures. Together with the Chair and Academic Director, Dr Vasvari is currently working on projects looking at the Operational and Financial performance of Leveraged Buyouts and the Cost of Debt in Leveraged Buyouts.

Professor Francesca Cornelli is a member of the core research team selected to investigate and review the global economic impact of Private Equity, commissioned by the World Economic Forum as part of their "Globalisation of Alternative Investments" project.

In addition, Professor Birkinshaw's research interests include corporate entrepreneurship, corporate strategy and knowledge management and innovation.