Are you an academic set on furthering your research? An alumni member seeking to reconnect with the latest frameworks? Or a potential student looking to enhance your skills?
Our Finance Faculty produce cutting-edge research and conduct analysis on finance industry topics – from fintech disruption to Eurozone insights.
We are a world-class research facility. Our faculty conduct globally recognised research, leading the following research centres and institutes:
Your company’s ability to thrive depends on strategy, execution and financial intelligence.
Master diverse financial tools and fill crucial gaps in your knowledge
Learn from world-class finance faculty and top practitioners
Be challenged by unparalleled thinking. Solve real-world problems through a dynamic blend of finance expertise, strategic thinking and a highly practical approach
Study in London, one of the world’s great financial capitals. Our location and expertise helps you stay ahead in a rapidly-changing world.
Core faculty
Our finance faculty are world-renowned leaders in their field.
Professor Suleyman Basak is recognised as one of the world’s leading experts on asset pricing and risk management. His influential and prize-winning research focuses on financial innovation, asset allocation, and market imperfections. It addresses issues related to portfolio insurance, Value at Risk-based risk management, credit risk, tax arbitrage, incentive problems plaguing institutional asset management, mispricing, arbitrageurs, and monopoly power in financial markets.
He has won a number of awards for his teaching. He received the General Excellence Teaching Award, Best Teacher Masters in Finance and Best Teacher Masters in Financial Analysis Awards at London Business School. He was previously at Wharton (University of Pennsylvania) where he won the David Hauck Teaching Award, and the Wharton Graduate and Undergraduate Divisions Excellence in Teaching Awards.
Previously, he was at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, held a visiting position at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, and acted as a consultant to Goldman Sachs.
João Cocco is a Professor of Finance at London Business School, a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a Fellow of the Centre for Financial Studies, and a Founding Member of the CEPR Network on Household Finance.
He holds an MA and a PhD degree in economics from Harvard University.
João has carried out research on a wide range of topics, including household finance, banking, corporate governance, asset allocation, real estate finance, and pensions. His research has appeared in top finance and economics journals including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, among others. His work has also been featured in leading newspapers and magazines, including Financial Times, The Times,The Actuary, and Pensions Week, among others. João is an accomplished teacher, who has won a number of teaching awards. He currently teaches Corporate Finance and Real Estate Finance at London Business School. João has held several consulting posts. He is Editorial Board Member of Economic Policy, of The Review of Financial Studies, and of the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance.
Ian Cooper is Professor of Finance. He currently teaches corporate finance and valuation. He has also held visiting positions at the University of Chicago and Australian Graduate School of Management.
Ian carries out research on corporate finance, valuation, and international finance. His research has appeared in top academic journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies. He disseminates the practical implications of his work through publications in leading practitioner journals such as Journal of Applied Corporate Finance and Oxford Review of Economic Policy, and in published consulting reports.
He has taught across the MBA, EMBA, and Masters in Finance programs, as well as Executive Education. For many years he directed and taught the Corporate Finance Evening and Modular Programs. The quality of his teaching has been recognised by multiple teaching prizes.
Ian has more than 40 years of international consulting experience on valuation, corporate finance, and cost of capital. He has advised companies, financial institutions, regulators, and governments around the world. He has appeared as an expert witness in international tribunals and high courts.
Dr De Simone’s research focuses on the intersection of corporate governance and public finance and on small business and household finance, especially in emerging markets. She was recently awarded the AQR Asset Management Institute Fellowship for Academic and Research Excellence for a study using data from Ecuador to show that government tax audits can improve firm value, ultimately reducing the cost of borrowing for audited firms and stimulating firm investment.
Rebecca's research is featured in the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development brochure.
Professor James Dow’s main research interests are the effect of limited arbitrage capital on stock price dynamics, financial fire sales, and bubbles. He has also worked on executive compensation and the role of financial markets on corporate resource allocation decisions. He has served as Editor of the Review of Economic Studies.
He held positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the European University Institute in Florence.
Professor Dow has published in the Journal of Political Economy, The Review of Economic Studies, Econometrica, The Journal of Finance, and The Review of Financial Studies.
His consulting experience has included advice on valuation, the cost of capital, and corporate governance, and expert testimony.
Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School and Academic Director of the Centre for Corporate Governance. Alex graduated from Oxford University and then worked for Morgan Stanley in investment banking (London) and fixed income sales and trading (New York). After a PhD in Finance from MIT Sloan as a Fulbright Scholar, he joined Wharton in 2007 and was tenured in 2013 shortly before moving to LBS.
Alex’s research interests are in corporate finance, responsible business and behavioural finance. He is Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal in Europe, and was inducted as a Fellow of the Financial Management Association.
Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, presented to the World Bank Board of Directors as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series, and given the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World and the TEDx talks The Pie-Growing Mindset and The Social Responsibility of Business with a combined 2.5 million views. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review and World Economic Forum and been interviewed by Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ITV, NPR, Reuters, Sky News, and Sky Sports.
Alex serves on the Steering Group of The Purposeful Company, a UK consortium of leaders in responsible business and on Royal London Asset Management’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee. The UK government appointed him (jointly with PwC) to conduct a study on the effect of share buybacks on executive pay and investment. Alex also serves as Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College, giving a four-year programme of lectures to the public. His 2020/21 lecture series is on The Principles of Finance and his prior series were on The Psychology of Finance, Business Skills for the 21st Century and How Business Can Better Serve Society. His book, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, was named to the Financial Times Business Books of the Year for 2020 and is being translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Korean, Russian, and Turkish. He is a co-author of the 14th edition of Principles of Corporate Finance (with Brealey, Myers, and Allen).
At Wharton, Alex won 14 teaching awards in six years. At LBS, he has won eight Best Teacher awards in the MBA and Masters in Financial Analysis programmes, as well as the Excellence in Teaching award for best professor across all programmes. He was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants, won the Finance for the Future award for Driving Change in the finance community, and featured in Thinkers50 Radar.
Julian Franks is Professor of Finance at London Business School, and former Academic Director of London Business School’s Centre for Corporate Governance. An expert in corporate finance, his research focuses on bankruptcy and financial distress, corporate ownership and control, shareholder activism by both hedge funds and active asset managers, cost of capital and regulation. His work on ownership and control (with Colin Mayer and Stefano Rossi) has won two international prizes. Two of his other papers have won best paper awards by the Journal of Financial Intermediation. He has been an editor of the Journal of Law, Finance and Accounting, and an associate editor of various other finance journals. He has served as a member of the DTI–Treasury committee reviewing the UK’s insolvency code, as a member of the Company Law Review’s committees on corporate governance, and as a member of the Breedon committee on non-bank sources of finance. He has also been Visiting Professor at the University of California at both Berkeley and Los Angeles, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Julian is currently an advisor to the Competition Market Authority. He has been an adviser to the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, a past member of the advisory board of ORR (the regulator for Network Rail), and was a member of an appeals panel for the New Zealand Commerce Commission. He has advised (with Professor Brealey) the Office of Constitutional Affairs on the issue of outside equity for law firms, and provided advice to a Treasury committee chaired by Paul Myners on a review of the governance of mutuals. He was an adviser to Ofcom for more than 15 years, and acted as an expert for them in three appeals to the Competition Authority. Julian is a partner at the consulting firm OXERA.
Professor Francisco Gomes’ areas of expertise include capital markets, asset allocation, household finance, and macroeconomics. His research has been published in leading journals, such as The Journal of Finance, The Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial Economics and The American Economic Review. He has given numerous seminars worldwide and he has been covered by The Financial Times, BBC and Bloomberg, among others.
Professor Gomes joined London Business School, in 2000, as an Assistant Professor of Finance – following receipt of his PhD from Harvard University. After earning his BA from the New University of Lisbon (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), he worked at the Bank of Portugal in its research department.
Professor Gomes is a Research Affiliate of the Centre for Economic Policy Research and one of the founding members of the CEPR Network on Household Finance.
Dr Roberto Gomez-Cram’s research interests include asset pricing, applied time series econometrics and investments. Dr Roberto previously worked as an Assistant Economist at the Central Bank of Mexico. He holds a PhD in Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr Marco Grotteria holds a PhD in Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. With research interests spanning the likes of asset pricing, macroeconomics, finance and politics – his work has been published in journals including the likes of the Review of Financial Studies.
Professor Christopher Hennessy's research focuses on information economics, moral hazard and debt, debt restructuring, tax planning, financing dynamics and credit risk. His work has been published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics and the Review of Financial Studies. He is a three-time winner of the Brattle Prize for outstanding corporate finance research and was named one of four rising stars in financial economics for 2010.
He is a Professor of Finance at London Business School and formerly Associate Professor and Finance Area Chair at the Walter A Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley. He holds a Master of Public Affairs degree and a PhD in Economics from Princeton University.
Professor Hennessy is currently editor of the Review of Corporate Finance Studies and associate editor of the Review of Finance, Finance Research Letters, and Management Science. He is also a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London and the European Corporate Governance Institute. He is a regular visitor at the Vienna Graduate School of Finance and University of Paris-Dauphine.
Formerly a senior associate at KPMG Peat Marwick and research analyst at the United States Treasury Office of Tax Analysis, Professor Hennessy has chaired the academic advisory board at Acumen Global Partners – a London-based derivatives advisory boutique – and served on the academic advisory panel of Benchmark Metrics. He recently received a grant from the European Research Council to study the affect of tax changes on corporate financing decisions.
Dr Howard Kung joined the School in August 2014, after two years at the University of British Columbia, Sauder School of Business. He completed his PhD in Finance at Duke University and prior to his doctorate, he studied Mathematics and Economics at the University of Virginia. Howard’s research focuses on macro-finance and asset pricing. It encompasses monetary/fiscal policy, industrial organisation, and its interaction with asset pricing and firms’ investment. He has published his research in top journals such as the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Monetary Economics. His research has been covered in major media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Reuters, Forbes, and Bloomberg. Howard teaches in the MBA and PhD programmes.
Joining LBS after completing a PhD in Finance at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Dr Naaraayanan’s research interests lie in the area of empirical corporate finance – including corporate governance, entrepreneurship, financial intermediation, and law and finance. His research has won several awards including the USC Marshall School of Business Trefftzs Award at the Western Finance Association Meetings. His work has been featuring in numerous publications such as the Financial Express, Forbes, Oxford Business and Law, and the World Bank.
Lakshmi's research is featured in the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development brochure.
Professor Narayan Naik is recognized as one of the leading experts on hedge fund investing. Over the last decade he has authored a significant body of work in hedge funds benchmarking, performance evaluation of long-only managers, tail-risk hedging, life settlements-longevity risk and market microstructure. His work has appeared in the top finance journals, leading practitioner journals and financial press. Professor Naik’s teaching includes the following subjects: Strategic Investment Management, Equity Investment Management and Hedge Funds.
Since joining London Business School (LBS) in 1991, Professor Naik has played a key role in the development of the finance group at LBS, most notably in the role of Director of the PhD Programme in Finance, Director of the School’s Investment Management Programme, Director of the Hedge Fund Research Centre and more recently, one of the Academic Directors of the AQR Asset Management Institute at LBS.
Professor Naik has designed, and taught tailor-made courses in corporate finance, investment management, Islamic Finance and hedge funds for investment banks and financial institutions. His most recent innovation has been the creation of FinTech and the Financial Services Industry Transformation elective. This course examines innovative technology-driven transformation of old business models in the financial services sector. Professor Naik’s research interests also lie within this field, exploring how Financial Technology is breaking the financial services value chain through more efficient provisioning of Payments, Deposits and Lending, Capital Raising, Wealth Management, Insurance, Market Data Analytics, as well as the impact on businesses on by the BlockChain and Cryptocurrency technology.
Professor Naik has appeared many times on CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, the BBC, ITV and other news channels as an expert finance academic. He has consulted widely during his career for the World Bank, sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, and private corporations in the UK, USA, Middle East and Far East.
Anna is Professor of Finance at London Business School (LBS). She is also Academic Director of the AQR Asset Management Institute at LBS and Programme Director of the Asset Pricing Programme at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). She serves on the European Economic Association Council and the SFI Scientific Council. Formerly, she was Director of the American Finance Association and Director of the European Finance Association.
Prior to joining LBS, she was on the faculty at MIT Sloan School of Management. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in Economics from the New Economic School (Moscow) and an MSc in Applied Mathematics from Moscow State University.
She has published in top journals such as American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies and Review of Economic Studies. Her recent research focuses on the impact of institutional investors on asset prices, ESG investing, retail trading in options, the financialisaton of commodities and frictions in international financial markets.
Anna has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant and has received a number of other prestigious awards for her research and teaching.
Professor Stephen Schaefer has published widely on fixed income markets, risk management, credit risk and financial regulation. His research includes a study on corporate debt default in the US over the past 150 years, which was awarded first prize in the 2011 Fama/DFA Award for the Best Paper Published in the Journal of Financial Economics in the areas of capital markets and asset pricing. He also received the 2015 Jack Treynor Prize from the Q Group, which recognises academic working papers with potential applications in the fields of investment management and financial markets.
Professor Schaefer was formerly a faculty member of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He has also been a visiting professor at the Universities of British Columbia, California (Berkeley), Cape Town, Chicago and Venice, where he was recently awarded an Honorary Fellowship. Today, he is the lead Academic Director for the London Business School’s AQR Asset Management Institute.
Outside academic life, he has consulted widely for a variety of financial institutions and is a co-author of two major reports for the Norwegian Ministry of Finance on the management of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund (the ‘Oil Fund’).
He has also been an independent board member of the Securities and Futures Authority; a senior research advisor to Moody’s KMV; a non-executive director of Leo Fund Management; a trustee-director of Smith Breeden Mutual Funds and a member of Moody’s Academic Research and Advisory Committee.
Professor Servaes is also a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research and a Research Associate of the European Corporate Governance Institute.
His areas of interest include corporate finance, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, and mutual funds. He has published articles in all the leading finance journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. He has won prizes for several of his articles, including the Journal of Financial Economics All Star Paper and the Journal of Finance Distinguished Paper Brattle Prize. In August of 2005, he was featured in the Financial Times series on Gurus of the Future.
His work has been presented at all major international finance conferences and at more than 100 universities worldwide. He has had previous appointments at the University of Chicago, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Henri has been involved in consulting and executive education for Anglo American, Barclays, Bertelsmann, BG Group, Continental, Deutsche Bank, E ON, The Financial Times (Lex Team), Freshfields, Mars, PwC, and Suez, among others. His work has been cited in a large number of international newspapers, including the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist.
At London Business School, he teaches corporate finance, corporate governance, and mergers & acquisitions.
Professor Vig’s research interests lie in the area of financial contracting and include: financial intermediation, firm choice of optimal debt structure, corporate governance, and law and finance. His papers have been published in leading journals, including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics and the Review of Financial Studies. He was previously Editor of the Review of Finance and currently serves on the advisory board of that journal. He is also currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Financial Intermediation. Vikrant has won several awards for his research and his work has been featured in leading media outlets, including the Economist, the Financial Times New York Times, the Wall Street Journal. Professor Vig received his PhD from Columbia University; his Master of Finance, MBA, and Master of Science in Engineering from the University of Illinois; and his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Delhi.
Mr. Avner joined Bain Capital Credit in 2006. He has been the Head of Bain Capital Credit Europe since 2009, is a Managing Director in Distressed and Special Situations and a Credit and Risk Committees member. Between 2006 and 2009, Mr. Avner was responsible for Bain Capital Credit's European Telecom and Media investments. Previously, Mr. Avner was a Manager at Bain & Company where he focused on private equity as well as the media and telecoms sectors. In addition, he spent six years in operations and marketing roles at Comverse Technology and Creo/Scitex.
Stan Beckers is Executive Fellow and Chair of the AQR Asset Management Institute at London Business School and Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Risk Committee at Rothesay Life in London. He was until April 2017 member of the Management Board of NN Group and CEO of NN Investment Partners (previously known as ING Investment Management). He has more than 30 years of professional and leadership experience in global finance and asset management with organizations such as BlackRock, Barclays Global Investors, Kedge Capital and WestAM. Stan was also one of the early partners at BARRA (now MSCI BARRA) where he started and ran the non-US operations for 20 years.
Over the years, Stan Beckers has served as a member of the investment committee of several pension funds and on the supervisory boards of KAS Bank and Robeco in the Netherlands. He has taught at various Universities such as UC Berkeley, VU Amsterdam, Cass Business School, London School of Economics and KULeuven. Stan has published over 50 papers in various academic journals such as The Journal of Finance, JFQA, The Financial Analysts Journal and The Journal of Portfolio Management.
Professor Richard Brealey’s research interests include corporate finance, investment management, international finance, capital markets and intermediation.
His publications include: Principles of Corporate Finance and Fundamentals of Corporate Finance and his recent research has appeared in journals such as the Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Applied Corporate Finance.
In addition to being Emeritus Professor of Finance at London Business School, he is director of the Swiss Helvetia Fund. He is also Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, advisory editor of Economic Notes and a member of the Advisory Board of International Finance.
He was formerly a special adviser to the Governor of the Bank of England and Tokai Bank Professor of Finance at London Business School. He has held visiting appointments at the University of California (Berkeley), the University of British Columbia, the University of Hawaii and the Australian Graduate School of Management.
Professor Elroy Dimson chairs the Centre for Endowment Asset Management at Cambridge Judge Business School, and is Emeritus Professor of Finance at London Business School.
His research focuses on responsible investment and long-horizon investing, and he and his co-authors have become well known for their studies of the investment performance since 1900 of financial assets in 23 countries and real assets such as wine, stamps, art and collectibles.
His publications, with several colleagues, on financial market history, endowment asset management, and responsible investing have been recognised by several awards.
Books include Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2020 (with Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton), Financial Market History (with David Chambers), Endowment Asset Management (with Shanta Acharya), and Triumph of the Optimists (with Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton). Publications since 2015 on active ownership (Review of Financial Studies), real assets (Journal of Financial Economics), financial history (Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis), investing in art (Review of Asset Pricing Studies), endowment strategy (Financial Analysts Journal), and factor investing and ESG investing (both Journal of Portfolio Management). Case studies on fossil fuel divestment (Journal of Investing) and on manager selection, real estate, and stocks for the long run (all Harvard Business School).
Dr Dimson chairs the Advisory and Policy Boards of FTSE Russell, and serves on the Advisory Council of Financial Analysts Journal, and the Supervisory Council of the Geneva Finance Research Institute. Until 2016 he chaired the Strategy Council of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, and before going to Cambridge was a Professor and Governor at London Business School.
He is a Fellow or Honorary Fellow of CFA UK, the Institute of Actuaries, the Royal Historical Society, the Risk Institute at Ohio State University, and Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. His PhD is from London Business School.
Tom Gosling is an Executive Fellow in the Department of Finance at LBS where he contributes to the evidence-based practice of responsible business by connecting academic research, public policy, and corporate action. He works with the Centre for Corporate Governance and the Leadership Institute at LBS.
Tom has 20+ years of experience as a board adviser and is a leading independent authority on corporate governance and responsible business. Most recently he was a senior Partner at PwC where he established and led the firm’s executive pay practice, advising FTSE-100 and equivalent private and European companies on corporate governance and executive pay including ABB, Barclays, BHP, BP, Flutter, GSK, Kerring, Old Mutual, RBS (NatWest), RSA, Standard Chartered, Tesco, and Unilever.
Prior to joining PwC, Tom was a Research Fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University. He has a PhD in Applied Mathematics and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.
As part of his role, Tom engages extensively with regulators such as BEIS, the FRC and the FCA on remuneration, corporate governance and stewardship policy matters. He participated in a joint PwC and London Business School team commissioned by BEIS to fulfil the Government’s manifesto commitment to study the impact of share buybacks on executive pay and investment and represented London Business School on the FCA’s Purpose Working Group, contributing to the Discussion Paper on Transforming culture in financial services – driving purposeful cultures. Tom has given evidence to the BEIS Select Committee and the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.
Tom is a regular commentator in print, broadcast, and social media. He presents the Grow the Pie podcast series with Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School, delving into the thinking behind his book of the same name. Tom is regularly quoted in the quality press, and has appeared on The Today Programme, Radio 5 Live, BBC News, and Sky News. His OpEds for the FT include Equality in Executive Pay is Not Always Fair and Fund Industry Can Flush Out the Closet Trackers.
Robert Jenkins is a former banker, fund manager and policy maker. He is currently a professor, board director and public policy advocate. Jenkins headed trading and sales for CitiGroup in Dubai, Bahrain, Switzerland and Japan. He then moved to the "buy side" where he led asset management firms in Tokyo, London and New YorkJenkins chaired the UK's Investment Association, was founding chair of the AQR Asset Management Institute at LBS and Chaired the Board of Governors of CFA Institute. He was an early appointee to the Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee. He has been a member of the UK's Panel on Takeovers and Mergers as well as a number of government high level groups. He has served in an advisory capacity to CVC Capital and as Senior Fellow at Better Markets.
Jenkins is a member of the supervisory board of NN Group, the Dutch-based financial services company. He teaches teaches investment management at London Business School. He is a paid contributor to the Financial Times.
In recognition of his many contributions to the investment profession Jenkins was made a Fellow of the Society of Investment Professionals by the CFA Society, UK.
Professor Paul Marsh’s main areas of expertise and interest are long-run investment returns, global equity markets, smaller companies’ investment, asset management and corporate finance.
He has published articles in the Journal of Business, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Portfolio Management, Harvard Business Review and many other journals.
Together with Elroy Dimson and Mike Staunton, he wrote the influential investment book Triumph of the Optimists, published by Princeton University Press. Since 2000, they have also produced the annual Global Investment Returns Yearbook, which documents global asset returns since 1900.
Paul is currently Emeritus Professor of Finance at London Business School and has been Chair of the Finance subject area, Deputy Principal, Faculty Dean, an elected Governor and Dean of the Finance Programmes (including the Masters in Finance).
Paul has been a non-executive director of M&G Group, Majedie Investments and Aberforth Smaller Companies Trust, where he was also Chairman. He has acted as a consultant to a wide range of financial institutions and companies.
Paul was part of the team that designed the FTSE 100 Share Index, and with Elroy Dimson, he co-designed the Numis Smaller Companies Index, and the Risk Measurement Service, which London Business School has published since 1979.
Are you an experienced professional looking to fast-track your career with a technical Masters degree? An executive seeking a wide range of complex financial solutions for your toolkit? Looking for a better understanding of financial information to improve your decision making? Or just starting out in your finance career?
Study at a global centre of finance and drive your career forward with the latest financial thinking.
Advanced Investments:We begin by considering how to allocate wealth into different asset classes and investment strategies. A particular emphasis is alternative assets and on long-term investing with a coherent modeling of assets and liabilities. We then discuss performance evaluation and attribution. We cover common investment strategies based on value, profitability, investment, momentum, carry, beta, and volatility. We also cover recent developments of more complex investment products, and compare and contrast them with traditional fund structures. We finally discuss limits to arbitrage and the costs of implementing actual trading strategies
This course will give students a hands-on, operational, quantitative understanding of corporate financial decisions-how to make them and how to implement them. Consistent with the mission of the MFA degree, it is assumed students either have a familiarity with the basic theory, or that they will be able to pick up the basic theory on the go.
Analyse the two key goals of the financial function: to invest wisely and to finance a company effectively. Examine the investment decisions companies make and financial market decisions such as capital structure.
Why do companies make the investment and financial decisions they do? Understand the principles of project appraisal and firm valuation, financial structure and pay-out policy, using real-life case studies. Assess the merits of real investments;
Compute corporate and project-level costs of capital
;Value corporate targets using discounted cash-flow and multiples-based methods
;Analyse financial structure decisions and credit risk at a quantitative level
;Understand the incentive effects of leverage decisions and the role of information in financial decisions
; Analyse corporate payout policy.
Analytics is now revolutionising the finance industry and central to most finance activities. Learn the concepts and tools needed to be at the forefront of this change. Consider how lenders can use Big Data to make faster, better credit decisions and examine how traders can use data analytics to maximise portfolio returns.
Explore capital structure choice studying the seminal Miller and Modigliani (MM) Theorem, which provides the conditions under which project choice and financing choice can be separated. Then, focus on the concept of optionality and how to apply it to both financial assets. Cover standard options, apply these insights to risk management and discuss corporate risk management, with a focus on the strategic decision of whether a firm should hedge its risk exposures.
Develop your own view on the optimal capital structure for a corporation
Understand the importance of asymmetric information and signalling in capital markets and financing;
Understand the ideas underlying option pricing
; Apply option pricing to financial and real options
This is a rigorous foundations course in investment analysis covering the basics of fixed income, equity and derivative securities as well as modern portfolio theory (how to invest across different securities/assets or asset classes). The focus is on understanding how to value securities, how to measure/manage the risk of these securities, the relationship between risk and return and the practical application of these concepts.
Asset Management: Consider how to allocate wealth into different asset classes and investment strategies. You’ll explore the contribution of fixed income in equity portfolios and the role of alternative investments. Focus on long-term investing with a coherent modelling of assets and liabilities, and performance evaluation; look into recent development of more complex investment products; and compare and contrast them with traditional fund structures. This will include the limits to arbitrage and the costs of implementing actual trading
Learn the frameworks for financial decision-making through a robust understanding of the principles and practice of financial management. Explore advanced theories in the valuation of investments, management of portfolios and risk management strategies:
Articulate the principle of “no-arbitrage” and why this is an important concept for valuing financial assets
;Calculate the value of risk-free and riskless cash flow streams, inc those accruing to real investment projects and financial assets
;Hedge an asset or liability’s exposure to changes in interest rates;
Understand why the term structure of interest rates is important;
Explain the theoretical basis for modern portfolio theory including its implementation and limitations
;Model and evaluate portfolio risk using factor models
;Value forward and futures contracts using the principle of no-arbitrage
;Value options using replicating portfolios, binomial option pricing, and the Black-Scholes model.
" This course will examine mergers and acquisitions. It will also examine conglomerates, focusing on unlocking the conglomerate discount, as well as examining alternatives to the traditional markets for corporate control, including private equity and shareholder activism. Private equity usually involves the acquisition of (or part of) a listed company or a private company. Activism involves the acquisition, usually, of a minority stake with the intention of changing the strategy of a company. Those strategic changes will often include, putting a company 'into play', restructuring the company, or spinning off some assets.
Personal Finance covers the financial decision-making of individuals/households as opposed to those of Corporations or Institutional Investors. More specifically, it will focus on the savings, investment and borrowing decisions. The course is therefore particularly relevant for those interested in the areas of wealth management, asset management, consumer finance, financial regulation and policy making.
The course provides an introduction to the fundamentals of private equity, including the main concepts, techniques, institutions, and dynamics of the sector. Specific themes include: deal sourcing, due diligence, valuation, financing and value creation, across both buyout and venture capital strategies. The course also covers the fund model and reviews the industry from the perspective of private equity firms themselves as well as their institutional investors.
Through in-depth cases and discussion of topical issues, discover the multitude of ways that corporate finance theory can be applied to practical problems, with all the complexities that the real world entails. Cover advanced topics in valuation and financing
In the past, the field of finance developed a successful paradigm based on the assumption that investors and managers are rational and that the market is efficient. Anecdotal evidence and research means we now know that this paradigm is insufficient to describe real financial markets. This course adds institutional, social, cognitive, and emotional biases into an analysis of financial market phenomena
Capital Markets and Financing (henceforth CMF) forms, with the Finance Core Course, a two-course sequence covering corporate finance and investments. While not a core course, CMF covers key areas of finance with which all EMBA graduates should be familiar.
Together with the Finance Core Course, a two-course sequence covering corporate finance and investments. While not a core course, CFCM covers key areas of finance with which all graduates should be familiar.
The objective of this course is to enable you to value businesses. This involves the application of ideas that you already know: DCF, cost of capital, M&M, etc. It involves deepening and extending your knowledge of how to apply these methods in the specific context of valuing businesses, as well as providing you with other financial tools that are useful in that context.
Develop an in-depth understanding of credit risk and credit derivatives, with a focus on modelling and valuation. Understand the balance between developing a conceptual framework and market understanding and insight. Learn about topics including: historical default experience and recovery rates, applications of structural models and default-intensity models of credit risk and credit spread options
Become a sophisticated and informed user of derivative instruments such as futures, swaps and options. Develop a sound understanding of the real-world details of the products and the models used to analyse them, as well as their limitations
Understand this innovative and influential area of corporate finance and private equity activity globally. Assess best practices in the field with reference to case studies, practical examples and lessons learnt. The course draws from The course draws from the experience of senior investment professionals and distressed fund advisors.
The Equity Investment Management course covers Strategic and Tactical asset allocation, Portfolio Optimization, Risk Measurement, Factor models of returns, Active-Passive management, Long-Short investing, Behavioural Finance, Style Analysis and Performance Measurement. It highlights some recent developments and how they are having an impact on all aspects of investment management
Multiple new technologies are finding their way into financial services, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, distributed ledger technology, cryptography, digital identity, SaaS platforms, chatbots, robotic process automation, and augmented reality. This has triggered the opportunity to fundamentally morph the business model of practically every financial services vertical - including payments, deposits & retail banking, lending, capital raising, wealth management, insurance, financial infrastructure, and regulation.
Learn about the hedge fund industry, which has grown rapidly over the last decade and is gaining recognition as an alternative to the traditional mutual fund investment. Examine the reasons for this, the modus operandi of hedge funds, their legal, organisational and operational structures, their risk-return characteristics, their model of aligning the interests of investors and managers and the likelihood of their success in the future
Gain the concepts and tools you need to understand real estate markets and manage real estate assets with a focus on value creation. Most of the course will focus on commercial real estate. Topics covered include valuation and investment analysis, financing, economic, legal, political and taxation issues and recent trends and challenges
Examine corporate re-organisations, including mergers and acquisitions, re-organisation through workouts and bankruptcy, divisional spin-offs and divestitures, and leveraged buyouts
The Project and Infrastructure Finance course focuses on the application of techniques and principles to structure, value and finance large-scale infrastructure and industrial projects. The course describes the many ways in which project finance techniques can be used to redistribute and mitigate the risks typically found in these complex projects. Students will work through a series of case studies to apply project finance techniques to real-life projects such as Public-Private Partnership (PPP) infrastructure concessions and commodity development opportunities
Students will learn Python coding and will apply the skills in a variety of financial problems, such as devising and evaluating trading strategies, portfolio construction, and risk assessment, among others. Students are expected to have basic level of coding experience in any other language and a good technical background (namely should be familiar with linear regression and basic linear algebra).
Gain the concepts and tools you need to understand real estate markets and manage real estate assets with a focus on value creation. Most of the course will focus on commercial real estate. Topics covered include valuation and investment analysis, financing, economic, legal, political and taxation issues and recent trends and challenges
There are some $90 trillion dollars of professionally managed assets globally. Where does the money come from? Where does it go? What factors shape how it is managed? Together we take a tour of the world of investment management. We look at the investment challenge through the eyes of the principal actors on the global money management stage - and the current trends shaping the industry in which they work. After 5 days you will be better prepared for a career in investment or one in which investors are your clients. Please note: this course is not a masterclass in how to invest; it is a unique look at how and why investors invest the way they do and the investment industry in which they operate. The block week runs dawn to dusk. It features a parade of practitioners. The level of assignments is not particularly difficult - but the pace and continuous participation required is demanding. Do not take this course unless you can devote the entire week to it
Value Investing course is intended to teach students the principle of value investing as developed by Graham and Dodd and as practiced by prominent buy-side investment professionals. Students would be taught fundamentals of long/short equity investing. This would be done through a combination of formal lectures, speaker sessions and in-class discussion on real world ideas. The emphasis would be on real world Investing decisions with a goal to provide students theory and practice of investing and help students develop business acumen and industry experience
"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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