Professor Aytekin Ertan joined London Business School in 2014 from Yale University. Aytekin’s research focuses on whether changes in accounting practices or regulation help overcome or create market frictions by studying the impact of these changes on the decision-making of the banking sector. Aytekin has published his research in top journals such as The Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, the Review of Accounting Studies, and the Review of Financial Studies. Aytekin teaches in the EMBA, PhD, and Executive Education programmes. He is on the editorial boards of The Accounting Review and the Review of Accounting Studies and regularly referees for various other top journals.
Dr. Alastair Lawrence is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the London Business School and previously, he was an Associate Professor of Accounting at the University of California at Berkeley.
His research investigates how investors use financial reporting information and the market pricing of digital firms.
His work has been published in leading publications such as The Accounting Review, Management Science, and the Journal of Accounting and Economics. He teaches Digital Investing and previously taught Financial Statement Analysis.
Andrew was educated at the University of Vienna and Balliol College Oxford. He is Professor of Management Practice at the London Business School.. He has also served in a number of administrative roles, including as Dean from 2009 to 2017. His current research is on human judgment and he has published on judgment in leadership, on the Board, in professions and in managing during Covid. He has an Honorary Doctorate from the London Business School and from three other universities.
Andrew’s career has included work in the public and private sectors, as well as in professional life.
In the public sector he was a member of the Cabinet Office Central Policy Review Staff and spent a 10-year period as one of the Managing Directors of the UK Treasury and Head of the UK Government Accountancy Service. In this period he led the project which changed the basis of government planning, control and reporting from cash to accruals. He has also been a Non-executive Chairman of the National Audit Office, Deputy Chairman of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust and a Director of the Bank of England. He has won the Sunday Times award for Non-Executive Director of the year in the public/not for profit sector.
In the private sector Andrew worked as a management accountant with Tootal Ltd, ran a textile plant in Germany and was Managing Director of the overseas division of Qualitex Ltd, with subsidiaries in France, the US and Malta. He has been the non-executive Chairman of the market research firm MORI Ltd, the Economists’ Bookshop Group, the California-based electro-technology company Applied Intellectual Capital plc and a non-executive Director of Barclays Bank plc, the listed UK insurance company Beazley plc and a national independent non-executive director of Times Newspapers Holdings Ltd. He is currently a non-executive director of Australian listed company Clinuvel Pharmaceuticals Ltd and of a start-up bank Monument plc.
In his professional capacity, Andrew has advised the House of Commons Treasury, Employment, Transport and Social Services Select Committees. He is a past President of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (who awarded him their Gold Medal) and was a member of the Financial Reporting Council. He has been a member of a number of official inquiries, including North Sea oil costs, international comparisons of telecoms and posts, and accounting for changing prices. He chaired a government study on professional liability. In the field of corporate governance, he was a member of the “Cadbury Committee” on UK corporate governance, and of the steering committee set up by Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the governance of the United Nations.
He lives in London and has two children and five grandchildren.
Professor Scott Richardson is a Senior Advisor (former principal) at AQR Capital Management.. He has nearly two decades of investment experience across equity and fixed income markets. He has held senior positions at BlackRock (Barclays Global Investors), including Head of Europe Equity Research and Head of Global Credit Research, where he oversaw research and investment decisions at BGI for both total return and absolute return products across credit and equity markets. He began his career as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Richardson’s research and teaching is focused on systematic investing across equity and fixed income markets, based on his extensive investment career. His new book ‘Systematic Fixed Income: An Investor’s Guide’ introduces a comprehensive framework for identifying the relevant sources of risk and return in public fixed income markets, and how to overcome implementation challenges, to provide asset owners with an attractive diversifying source of active returns.
He is an editor of the Review of Accounting Studies and has published extensively in leading academic and practitioner journals. In 2009 he won the Notable Contribution to Accounting Literature award for his work on earnings quality and accruals. Scott earned a BEc with first-class honours from the University of Sydney and a PhD in business administration from the University of Michigan.
Professor Lakshmanan Shivakumar is a prolific and influential academic researcher, who has been invited to talk at universities and conferences in over 25 countries. He was formerly the subject area Chair for the Accounting group at London Business School and has been a member of the School’s Executive Committee. He has held visiting positions at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, the Indian School of Business, the Australian National University, Singapore Management University and the University of New South Wales, and has been a council member of the American Accounting Association.
His main research interests are in the areas of financial reporting quality, stock-return predictability and macro-accounting. He has published articles in several top-tier accounting and finance journals and is (or has been) a co-editor of the Review of Accounting Studies and The Accounting Review. His research on financial reporting quality includes an examination of the role of conservatism in financial reporting and earnings management in firms issuing public equity. On stock return predictability, his research has addressed issues relating to the causes of underlying price momentum and post-earnings-announcement drift anomalies. His studies have explained how aggregate corporate profits drive future inflation and how corporate taxes affect macroeconomic growth.
An award-winning teacher, Shivakumar currently teaches courses on Financial Statement Analysis and on Securities Analysis and Financial Modelling. He also consults for bankers and consulting firms on valuation, financial analysis and investment strategies. His research has been presented to regulators and development agencies across the world, including the African Development Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Singapore Stock Exchange.
He is a member of the Financial Reporting Advisory Board, which advises the UK Government on its financial reports.
Professor Tahoun is as an Associate Professor at London Business School. Tahoun has been a research scholar at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Wharton School, a faculty member at the London School of Economics, a research fellow at the University of Valencia, and a banker at HSBC. His research tackles important questions in society ranging from the quid-pro-quo relations between politicians and the corporate world, the economic consequences of the Egyptian Revolt, and the global development of securities law in response to corporate scandals during the past 200 years. He has also been engaged in comparative international work on executive compensation, looking for the roots of cross-country differences in pay packages. His current research agenda focuses on measuring a firm’s exposure to political risk and to technology shocks and exploring how this exposure affects firms in capital and factor markets. He has published his research in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Accounting Review and the Review of Finance. The New York Times and the FT have covered his work. He is currently an associate editor at the Journal of Accounting Research. Tahoun has been the recipient of five consecutive grants from the prestigious Institute of New Economic Thinking, he has twice received LBS’s faculty research award, he was granted the Referee of the Year award by the Journal of Accounting Research and was made a member of its editorial board. Tahoun was named as one of the Top 40 Professors under 40. Tahoun received his PhD from MBS and completed his doctoral training courses at the Wharton School and Tilburg University.
Founder of Private Equity at LBS, Professor Eli Talmor is co-author of Private Capital, broadly considered to be the reference book on the private equity industry. He is frequently invited to deliver keynote speeches to business executives worldwide, testified at the UK Parliament on private equity and advised the UK Prime Minister’s Office.
He served on the London Business School Board of Governors and the advisory board of the African Venture Capital Association. He also practices venture capital and is a serial cornerstone investor with multiple exits.
Before joining the London Business School, he was on the finance faculty at the University of California (UCLA and Irvine), Tel Aviv University and the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania).
Professor Irem Tuna is a Professor of Accounting at London Business School and teaches classes on Financial Accounting, Corporate Governance, Corporate Communication and Investor Relations to masters and doctoral students, and Financial Statements Analysis for Executive Education. Before joining London Business School, she was on the faculty of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Tuna’s research interests are in firm valuation, earnings quality, corporate governance, and disclosure. She has published work in a variety of journals in her field, including the Review of Accounting Studies, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, The Accounting Review, and Contemporary Accounting Research. She has served as an editor at The Accounting Review, and is on the editorial boards of the Review of Accounting Studies, Contemporary Accounting Review, Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, and European Accounting Review.
She holds a PhD in Business Administration with a concentration in Accounting from the University of Michigan.
Professor Florin Vasvari teaches courses on Distressed Investing as well as Private Equity and Venture Capital. He is an expert on the use of accounting information in credit markets and private equity funds. His research investigates the pricing and the role of accounting information in secondary debt markets, debt contracting issues, securitizations of syndicated loans, debt market intermediaries, bankruptcy valuation as well as private equity funds reporting practices and performance. His work on private equity includes work on ESG reporting, limited partners' private equity allocations, private equity valuation and performance measurement, private equity secondaries and aspects of risk management.
Florin has published over 20 academic articles in leading academic journals and many other articles in industry journals. He is frequently invited to present at top business schools around the world as well as academic and practitioner conferences.
Professor Vasvari currently serves as an Editor at The Accounting Review, a top journal published by the American Accounting Association. He also serves on the School’s Management Board and Finance Committee.
With Eli Talmor, he co-authored Private Capital (vol. 1 Funds and vol. 2. Investments) in 2019. The book has been endorsed by leading figures in the private equity industry. Together with Eli, Florin has also co-authored International Private Equity, in 2011.
Accounting faculty teach on the following core courses and electives (as part of our Masters and PhD programmes) and the Executive Education courses listed below.
Gain a basic understanding of the financial reporting process and of managerial accounting. The financial accounting component will equip you with the skills needed to successfully analyse a relatively complex set of financial statements and to extract information from accounting data to make informed decisions. The managerial accounting component covers basic accounting techniques and the impact of strategic and organisational change on accounting information.
Improve your understanding of the accounting process and considerations that shape the properties of the information contained in financial statements., and learn how to use accounting information in decision-making.
Learn to interpret a financial story from any organisation, build your technical toolkit and develop an advanced understanding of revenue recognition, revaluations, foreign currency adjustments, deferred taxes, pension accounting and securitisation. Gain the skills to read and analyse company financial information and make meaningful comparisons across businesses.
Master the financial accounting skills that every executive needs to be able to communicate company results and make accounting choices. This includes computing and interpreting basic financial ratios, and exploring the reasons behind international differences in reporting..
Understand how company accounting works and become a skilled user of financial statements, Learn to analyse financial information and statements and draw inferences about a firm’s past performance and future prospects. Understand the main sources of reporting choices and creativity in accounting practice, and how to control for this when analysing, valuing and comparing several firms..
Modern analytics has endless applications at the intersection of financial and non-financial data. Explore and solve real-world problems and data sets and apply analytics in a financial setting. Analyse, explain and justify your findings to a VC general partner or a C-suite executive.
The increase in globalisation and integration, financial innovations, and rise of the intangible economy has brought with it a myriad of financial reporting issues that investors and regulators alike have been slow to fully grasp. Develop your understanding of the more complex contemporary accounting issues facing today’s global corporations, complete your accounting training and gain the necessary knowledge to prepare for accounting elective offerings.
Examine basic accounting techniques and the impact of strategic and organisational change on accounting information. Understand how to measure, analyse and interpret information within the organisation to support essential financial managerial decisions, focusing on costs, budgeting, financial control and performance measurement
Examine basic accounting techniques and the impact of strategic and organisational change on accounting information. Understand how to measure, analyse and interpret information within the organisation to support essential financial managerial decisions, focusing on costs, budgeting, financial control and performance measurement.
Learn some of the key tools and techniques to execute business strategies. Learn to organise business for better performance, identify and manage strategic risks, and understand key accounting issues facing today's firms. This course is for you if you plan to become a management consultant, an entrepreneur, a manager (e.g., CEO, CFO, product manager), or aim to have a career in private equity.
What role does finance play in society? How do we create financial systems that are fit for purpose? This unique course asks you to reflect on finance from a wider perspective, and gain a deep understanding of its past, its future and your role in this.
Delve into issues such as business strategy, the reformulation of financial statements, structured forecasting and residual income valuation. Develop a thorough understanding of company value drivers and gain the ability to apply fundamental security analysis and valuation.. Use accounting information to produce a full financial model of the firm and understand how investors and analysts employ the financial model to appraise and value companies.
This course is about evaluating the quality of financial information and using the information to reveal the economics of firms. A significant element in the course is analyzing the financial statements of a major bank. These are core skills for equity and credit analysis, in investments, and investment banking and advisory work. The course is designed for anyone planning a career in which they will have to evaluate or make decisions based on financial data. The course is particularly suitable for financial analysts, bankers, investment bankers, security analysts, institutional investors, and consultants. Students from all programs are welcome as long as they have some accounting background (in addition to the core course).
This course will provide a framework for identifying digital companies and assessing their potential values. It will highlight why digital companies are fundamentally different both operationally as well as financially. Students will analyse opportunities for digital companies as well as discuss the significant risks facing such companies. The course will illustrate the key financial reporting considerations of digital investing, and students will learn where to find key financial reporting disclosures for digital companies and how they vary between types of digital companies. Leading executives and analysts will provide their insights into where the digital space is going.
The course will cover the financial reporting implications of consolidations, joint ventures, leveraged buyouts and recapitalizations, spin-offs, carve-outs, and special purpose entities. The complexity of these issues has resulted in companies pushing the reporting envelope in order to achieve desired financial reporting objectives. We will focus on understanding the link between underlying economic events and the information in financial statements, and on how this link affects our assessment of the firm.
The purpose of this course is to provide users with critical skills to analyse public companies' financial statements from the investor's perspective. The course is designed to be extremely practical and current in nature, and is aimed at getting you well on your way to becoming an informed and sceptical user of financial reporting information and in turn, laying the framework for you to become a competent and confident investor. The course will primarily consist of the following three components : i) pre-lecture notes that should be read prior to the class, ii) the lecture slides that will be available at the beginning of the course; and iii) current cases written, also available at the beginning of the course. Most of the cases will be in real-time so that we can simulate making investment decisions without the benefit of hindsight bias, and you can decide whether after our analyses you want to include the stock in your mock portfolio.
This course covers the main concepts, techniques, instruments and institutions involved in the private equity investment. We present a broad set of deals to gain familiarity with the private equity investment model and the opportunities set. Specific themes include: the structure and strategy of the private equity firm, valuation, financing, deal processing, and harvesting.
The course stresses fundamental analysis to isolate value drivers and focuses on a disciplined approach to security analysis and valuation. It does this through the use of financial statements and the development of an analytical framework for understanding business performance and financial structure. The course shows how to use accounting information to produce a full financial model of the firm and how investors and analysts employ the financial model to appraise and value companies. The course covers several alternative methods of valuation and appraisal.
The focus will be on the valuation of securities that embed credit risk. This includes, but is not limited to, corporate bonds, credit default swaps, credit indices, asset backed securities, emerging hard currency bonds, and capital structure. By the end of the course the students should have a sound understanding of (i) the trading conventions of these securities, (ii) determinants of the returns of the these securities, (iii) the role of fundamental analysis and structural models in identifying mispriced credit securities, and (iv) how risk and transaction costs affect your ability to build a portfolio of credit instruments. In addition to understanding the drivers of returns, risk and trading costs of credit related securities, the students will via 'hands-on' exercises develop investment skills via experiential learning. This course is aimed at individuals looking for a career in active asset management.
The objective of this course is to give you a solid understanding of financial accounting research. The readings will mainly focus on archival research in financial accounting, and aim to develop the skill to critically evaluate research papers as well as generate research ideas for your summer papers and dissertation. The course will be taught in seminar style. The students are expected to have read all assigned readings (which will be announced a week before each session) and come to class prepared to present and critique the papers. In addition to the assigned readings for the week, time permitting, we will also discuss the Accounting Workshop paper of the week to facilitate the students' participation at the workshop.
The objective of this course is to give you a solid understanding of financial accounting research. The readings will mainly focus on archival research in financial accounting, and aim to develop the skill to critically evaluate research papers as well as generate research ideas for your summer papers and dissertation. The course will be taught in seminar style. The students are expected to have read all assigned readings (which will be announced a week before each session) and come to class prepared to present and critique the papers. In addition to the assigned readings for the week, time permitting, we will also discuss the Accounting Workshop paper of the week to facilitate the students' participation at the workshop.
"Attending the Accelerated Development Programme is a unique opportunity for participants to learn not only from our world-class faculty but from their fellow participants. Consequently, the way the programme is designed encourages you to get to know as many people as possible and to form a life-long network of culturally diverse peers".
"Thinking strategically, developing leadership skills and managing globally are the keys to achieving and maintaining competitive advantage in a rapidly evolving marketplace".
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