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Christopher Hennessy

Professor of Finance; Chair, Finance Faculty, London Business School

BA (Swarthmore) | MA PhD (Princeton)

Christopher Hennessy is Professor of Finance and Chair of the Finance Faculty at London Business School. His research focuses on information economics, moral hazard and debt, debt restructuring, tax planning, financing dynamics, and credit risk. His work has been published in Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies. He is a three-time winner of the Brattle Prize for outstanding corporate finance research, was named one of four Rising Stars in Financial Economics in 2010, and received a European Research Council Starting Independent Researcher Grant to study the effect of tax changes on corporate financing decisions.

Christopher serves as Editor of the Review of Corporate Finance Studies and Associate Editor of the Review of Finance, Finance Research Letters, and Management Science. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London and the European Corporate Governance Institute, and is a regular visitor at the Vienna Graduate School of Finance and the University of Paris-Dauphine.

Prior to joining LBS in 2008, Christopher was Associate Professor and Finance Area Chair at the Walter A. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, having joined as Assistant Professor in 2001. He also held a visiting position at UCLA Anderson School of Business. Earlier in his career, he was a Senior Consultant at KPMG Peat Marwick and a Research Associate at the United States Treasury Office of Tax Analysis. He holds a Master of Public Affairs and a PhD in Economics from Princeton University.

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Academic and professional experience

  • Professor of Finance and Chair, Finance Faculty, London Business School

  • Research Associate, Centre for Economic Policy Research, London

  • Research Associate, European Corporate Governance Institute

  • Partner, Acumen Global Partners (2008–2010)

  • Associate Professor and Finance Area Chair, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley (2006–2008)

  • Member, Advisory Board, Benchmark Metrics Inc. (2006–2008)

  • Visiting Assistant Professor, UCLA Anderson School of Business (2005)

  • Assistant Professor, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley (2001–2006)

  • Senior Consultant, KPMG Peat Marwick (1994–1996)

  • Research Associate, United States Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis (1993)

Awards and honours

  • European Research Council Starting Independent Researcher Grant (2011–2015)

  • Finance Rising Star Award (2010)

  • Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellow, University of California, Berkeley (2008)

  • Brattle Prize, Outstanding Paper, Journal of Finance (2004, 2005 and 2007)

  • Guttmann Fellow, Vienna (2007)

  • Schwabacher Fellow, University of California, Berkeley (2006)

  • Junior Faculty Research Grant, University of California, Berkeley (2004 and 2005)


Teaching portfolio

Our teaching offering is updated annually. Faculty and programme material are subject to change.

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