Robert I. Webb is a professor of Finance at the University of Virginia. He is a Paul Tudor Jones II Research Professor at the McIntire School of Commerce of the University of Virginia. Professor Webb specializes in the study of speculative markets, with particular emphasis on how differences in market structure—or the way financial markets are organized—affect the behavior of financial market prices. He is also interested in how traders make decisions and how “noise” (i.e., noninformational factors) affects financial markets. His current research interests include the impact of high-frequency trading on financial market prices, latency, and behavioral finance.  Additionally, he is the editor of the Journal of Futures Markets, published by Wiley-Blackwell. He is also the author of Macroeconomic Information and Financial Trading, Trading Catalysts: How Events Move Markets and Create Trading Opportunities and “Shock Markets: Trading Lessons for Volatile Times”.

Previously he was a consultant to the World Bank and he traded on the floor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He also served as a Senior Financial Economist at both the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Webb received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire and obtained his doctorate from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Bidisha Chakrabarty, is the Edward Jones Professor in Finance at The John Cook School of Business at Saint Louis University.

Chakrabarty, who is recognized for her teaching and research, has received a number of awards and recognitions including the Outstanding Faculty Award given by the John Cook School of Business Alumni Board, the Kwak Research Award for the best research productive faculty, the ICRIER policy paper grant and the National Stock Exchange of India Research Initiative Grant. She is an accomplished author and researcher on the topics of market microstructure, securities regulation, disclosure and market reaction, and market design and price discovery. She has published in academic journals, including the Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Financial Management, Journal of Financial Research and Research in Accounting Regulations. Chakrabarty joined the faculty of the John Cook School of Business in 2003.

Krishnamurthy Subramanian is Associate professor of finance at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. He holds a Ph.D. from the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business. His research in banking, law and finance, innovation and economic growth, and corporate governance has been published in the world’s leading journals.
He regularly appears as an expert commentator for NDTV and UTV-Bloomberg, is a featured columnist with The Economic Times and Mint. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. In previous academic roles, Subramanian served on the finance faculty at Goizueta Business School at Emory University in the United States. He obtained his MBA and Ph.D. in finance at the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business under the advice Professor Raghuram Rajan and Professor Luigi Zingales.

Prof. Binay Bhushan Chakrabarti has over two decades of teaching, research and industry experience. He was a Professor of Finance at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta. He has taught at many top B-schools including IIM-Ahmedabad, IIM-Indore, XIMB amongst others.

IIM-Calcutta alumni, Prof. Chakrabarti completed his Ph. D in Economics from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He holds a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. His teaching and research interests include corporate finance, international finance, financial intermediation, financial derivatives, financial markets, asset pricing, capital management, risk management and profit centre management. He is an Associate Member of the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India (ICWAI). He became the Director of IIM Ranchi in September 2013.

Professor Jacob Thomas is the Williams Brothers Professor of Accounting and Finance at the Yale School of Management. He focuses on the relation between accounting information and stock prices. Insights recently developed in this area that suggest fundamental links between accounting numbers and value form the basis of much of his recent teaching and research. He was actively involved in developing the core curriculum and has written cases and other teaching material for the courses he teaches on equity valuation and financial management. Differences between stock prices and fundamental value provide the basis for his examination of various stock trading strategies. Before joining the faculty at the Yale School of Management, he was the Ernst & Young Professor of Accounting and Finance at Columbia Business School.

Vineet Virmani is an Assistant Professor of the Finance & Accounting area at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad since January 2011. He has received his degree in engineering from IIT (BHU), Varanasi and his doctorate in management from IIMA with a specialization in Economics.  After finishing his doctorate, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow first at ISB, Hyderabad and then at IIMA before leaving for industry. Before coming back to IIMA, he was with Nomura/Lehman Services, Mumbai and Bank of America Continuum. Prior to that, he was at Dell International Services, Bangalore as an econometrician. His research interests are in the areas of Derivatives Pricing, Financial Econometrics & Risk Management.

Dr. Manju Jaiswall is an Associate Professor in the Finance and Control area at Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. She has done her M. Phil in Commerce from University of Calcutta and doctorate in Management from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. Her research interests are in the areas of Corporate Governance, Financial Reporting, Earnings Management and Executive Compensation. She teaches courses in corporate financial reporting, cost management and financial statement analysis.

Arpita Ghosh is an Associate Professor of Finance and Control group in Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. She joined IIM Calcutta in May 2010. Her research focuses on Corporate Financial Reporting, Corporate Governance, Earnings Management, Banking sector in India, CSR and Corporate Sustainability, Enterprise Risk Management. Arpita received her master degree from University of Calcutta and is a fellow of IIM Calcutta. Prior to joining Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, she was an Assistant Professor at IIM Ahmedabad from November 2008 to May 2010.

Vivek Rajvanshi is an Associate Professor in the Finance and Control group at Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He joined IIM Calcutta in April 2015. Prior to joining IIM Calcutta, he was an Assistant Professor at IIM Lucknow. He has done his masters in Statistics and is a fellow of IIM Calcutta. His teaching areas include Corporate Finance, Derivatives and Fixed Income Markets. His research areas are Derivatives, Market Microstructure, Portfolio Management and Volatility Modeling. His Current Research Interests are Market Microstructure and Futures Markets and Current Consulting Interests is Commodity Futures Markets

Yakov Amihud

Title of his talk:  The Effect of Stock Liquidity on the Firm’s Investment and Production

Abstract of his talk: 

We show that stock market liquidity affects subsequent corporate investment and production. Stock illiquidity, which raises the firm’s cost of capital, lowers investment in capital assets, R&D, and inventory. This effect holds regardless of the firms’ financially constraints. Consequently, illiquidity induces firms to adopt production processes that are less capital intensive. Illiquid firms have higher marginal productivity of capital, greater labor input increase for given increases in assets, and lower operating leverage, thus being less reliant on fixed costs. These effects hold after controlling for endogeneity, employing an exogenous liquidity event – the 2001 decimalization – and the instrumental variable method.

Bio: 

Yakov Amihud is Ira Rennert Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance at the Stern School of Business, New York University. His research includes the evaluation of corporate financial policies, mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, objectives of corporate managers, dividend policy, and law and finance.

The focus of his research is the effects of liquidity of assets on their returns and values, and the design and evaluation of securities markets’ trading methods. On these topics, Amihud has done consulting work for the NYSE, AMEX, CBOE, CBOT, and other securities markets. He has published more than seventy research articles in professional journals and in books, and edited and co-edited five books on topics such as LBOs, bank M&As, international finance, and securities market design.

Neerav Nagar is a Fellow of IIM Calcutta. He is currently an Assistant Professor at IIM Ahmedabad. Prior to joining IIM Ahmedabad, he was teaching at IIM Trichy. He has also taught at few management institutes in Mumbai and Pune. He has about six years of full-time teaching and research experience. His teaching and research interests lie in the areas of financial accounting, financial statement analysis and earnings management. His research work has been published in leading journals like Corporate Governance: An International Review, Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation and Accounting Research Journal. Before starting with his teaching, he earned an MBA in Finance from Indira Institute of Management. His other educational qualifications include B.Com. (Honors, Accounting) and Diploma in Business Finance.

Plenary Session: 21^st December 2023

Speaker: Prof. (Dr.) Robert Faff

Associate Dean – Research, Professor, Centre for Data Analytics, University Professorial Fellow, Bond Business School, Robina, Australia

Topic: The Art of Pitching Finance Research … Responsibly

Prof. Robert Faff is the Associate Dean – Research and University Professorial Fellow, Professor, Centre for Data Analytics, Robina, Australia. Professor Faff’s research focuses on empirical finance and accounting, with particular emphasis on asset pricing, corporate finance, and capital markets. His research focuses on pitching research, risk factors, trading strategies, alternative investments, mutual & hedge funds, credit ratings, risk modelling, behavioural finance, stock liquidity, risk management & hedging, insider trading, rights offerings, capital structure, financial risk tolerance, M&As, corporate governance, and bank risk taking. He has 358 peer-reviewed articles published across more than 80 different titles. Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Business, Journal of Financial Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Corporate Finance, Review of Finance, Journal of Corporate Finance, Accounting & Finance. He has a Doctor Honoris Causa (Bucharest University of Economic Studies) in 2015, a PhD (Monash) in 1994, a MEc (ANU) in 1986, a BEc Hons. (ANU) in 1984, and an FCPA in 1984. He has won numerous research awards, including the AANZ Best Manuscript Award for Best Paper Published in Accounting and Finance in 1988 and 2001, the E. Yetton Award for Best Manuscript Published in the Australian Journal of Management in 1998 and 2000, the JASSA Merit Award, and the Dae-Yang Prize for Best Paper Published in the Journal of Economic Integration in 2003. Overall Chair (and Finance Panel Chair) of the 2013 ABDC Journal Rating List Review Panel. He also served on the Managing Board of the European Institute of Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) from 2014 to 2023.

Plenary Session: 22nd December 2023

Speaker: Prof. (Dr.) Sabri Boubaker

Professor of Finance

Editor-in-Chief

Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting

& La Revue Française de Gouvernance d’Entreprise

(French Corporate Governance Review)

EM Normandie Business School

France

Topic: Investing in the Future: The Importance of Green Finance and ESG.

Sabri Boubaker a Professor of Finance at EM Normandie Business School (Paris, France) and the University of Swansea (Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom). Pr. Boubaker holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Paris Est (2006) and an HDR degree (Habilitation for Supervising Doctoral Research) in 2010 from the same university. He is the recipient of “The Economic Research Foundation’s Research Award 2022” from the “Centrum for Forskning om Ekonomiska Relationer, Sweden” and the best corporate finance paper award at the 2023 Asian Finance Conference. He was/is visiting professor/researcher at Cass Business School (London, UK), University of Birmingham (Birmingham, UK), Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada), University of Cranfield (Bedford, UK), University of Portsmouth (Portsmouth, UK), University of Brunel (London, UK), University of Bologna (Bologna, Italy), University of Napoli Parthenope (Napoli, Italy), University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand), Rabat Business School (Morrocco, France), University of Tunis (Tunis, Tunisia) and the Vietnam National University (VNU-IS, Hanoi, Vietnam). Sabri Boubaker has recently published many academic papers (more than 100 papers) in international refereed journals, including the Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of International Money and Finance, Financial Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Auditing: A Journal of Theory & Practice, and British Journal of Management. Pr. Boubaker has also edited twelve books on corporate finance, corporate governance, and corporate social responsibility (Emerald Group Publishing, Springer Verlag, World Scientific Publishing, Palgrave Macmillan, Elsevier, Edward Elgar, etc.). He is also the co-director of the book series Transformations in Banking, Finance, and Regulation (World Scientific Publishing). Pr. Boubaker is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting (IF: 5.1, Scopus Q1, Clarivate Q1) and serves on the editorial boards of several accounting and finance academic journals such as the British Journal of Management, Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions, and Money (Subject Editor), International Review of Economics and Finance (Associate editor), International Review of Economics and Finance (Associate editor) and International Journal of Finance & Economics (Associate editor). He is the co-founder and co-chair of the annual Paris Financial Management Conference (2013–).

Sumit Agarwal is Low Tuck Kwong Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Business School and a Professor of Economics and Real Estate at the National University of Singapore. He is also the Managing Director of Sustainable and Green Finance Institute at NUS. In the past, he has held positions as a Professor of Finance at the Business School, Georgetown University. Before that he was a senior financial economist in the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and prior to joining the Chicago Fed, he was a senior vice president and credit risk management executive in the Small Business Risk Solutions Group of Bank of America.

Sumit’s research interests include issues relating to household sustainablity, financial institutions, household finance, behavioral finance, and real estate markets. He has published over one hundred research articles in journals like the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies among others. Additionally, he has co-written three books titled Household Finance: A Functional Approach , Kiasunomics , and Kiasunomics2 , and also co-edited two collected volumes titled Impact of COVID-19 on Asian Economies and Policy Responses, and Household Credit Usage: Personal Debt and Mortgages. He writes regular op-ed’s in the Straits Times and is featured on various media outlets like the BBC, CNBC, and Fox on issues relating to finance, banking, and real estate markets. Sumit’s research is widely cited in leading newspapers and magazines like the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, and the U.S Presidents Report to Congress. He also runs a blog on household financial decision making called Smart Finance.

Ashok Banerjee joined the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIM-C) as Professor (Finance and Control) in August 2004. Prior to joining IIM-C, he was a professor at IIM Lucknow. He is a Postgraduate in Commerce from University of Calcutta and a qualified Chartered Accountant. He obtained his Ph.D. for his research on Economic Value Added as a Performance Measure. At IIM Calcutta, he is a senior Professor in the Finance and Control group, and takes several advanced courses in Finance like Financial Accountancy, Corporate Finance, Corporate Restructuring and Behavioural Finance. He is also the faculty in-charge of the Finance Research and Trading Lab at IIM-C. Banerjee’s primary research interests are in areas of Financial Time Series, Operational Risk Management, News Analytics and Mergers & Acquisitions.

Ashok Banerjee is the author of the book Financial Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis, which is widely used as a text book in Finance and Accountancy courses in Indian Business schools. In addition to this, Banerjee has also authored several research papers in major Finance & Management research journals.

Partha Ray is currently Professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Prior to this, he was Director, Department of Economic and Policy Research, Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai, and Adviser to Executive Director, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC during 2007-2011.

Paul Romer is an American economist who was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize for Economics for his contributions to the understanding of long-term economic growth and its relation to technological innovation. Romer studied mathematics and physics at the University of Chicago, earning a B.S. degree in 1977. After graduate study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Queens University (Ontario, Canada), he received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1983. He later taught at the University of Rochester, the University of Chicago, the University of California at Berkeley, the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and the New York University Stern School of Business. In 2000 he founded Aplia, Inc., an online learning company. From 2016 to 2018 he served as chief economist of the World Bank.

Romer is the author of many important scholarly papers, including “Endogenous Technological Change” (1990), which first outlined the theory of endogenous growth.

Ritwik Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of the Economics and Social Sciences area at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. His primary research area is at the intersection between Behavioural and Development Economics and he extensively uses Experimental Methods for his research. Some of the topics he has investigated or is currently investigating are corruption, inequality, education and discrimination. His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Economics Letters and Journal of Public Economics. Prior to his current assignment, he has worked as Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Aarhus University, Denmark with an independent grant from the Social Science Research Council of Denmark. He was an Academic Visitor at the Research Department of Federal Reserve, Chicago during the summer of 2012 and a Visiting Scholar at the Economics Department, Harvard University in Spring 2015. He has also served as a Consultant at the World Bank in Washington DC and as a Research Associate at ICRIER, New Delhi. For more information of his research, please visit www.ritwikbanerjee.in .

Arvind Subramanian is an Indian economist and the former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. Currently, he  is  a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and a visiting lecturer in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He rejoined the Institute in August 2018, following his service as the chief economic advisor to the government of India since October 2014. He joined PIIE in 2007 and later in 2013 was designated as the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Institute. He has also served as senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Before joining PIIE, Subramanian was the assistant director in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. He served at the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) from 1988 to 1992 during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and previously taught at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies.

He obtained his undergraduate degree from St. Stephens College, his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, and his M.Phil and D.Phil from the University of Oxford.

Utpal Bhattacharya

Professor of Finance, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

Professor Bhattacharya received his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1980; an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, in 1982; and his Ph.D. in Finance from Columbia University in 1990. He joined HKUST in 2014.

Professor Bhattacharya’s research is about the dark side of financial markets. He believes, with apologies to Thomas Jefferson, that “the price of capitalism is eternal vigilance.”

Professor Bhattacharya is the Executive Editor of Financial Management, and was an Associate Editor of the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Markets. His publications have appeared in top-tier finance journals like the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, The Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and the Journal of Business, top-tier accounting journals like The Accounting Review, and top-tier economics journals like the Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Law and Economics and the Journal of Monetary Economics.

Professor Bhattacharya’s research has been featured in full-length stories more than a hundred times in various media across the world, including five times in the Economist . He wrote a satire about the legendary fraudster Madoff in the New York Times . He has been invited to present his research in more than 200 institutions in 32 countries in 5 continents. He wrote a report for and served as a member of the “Task Force to Modernize Securities Regulation in Canada” in 2006. He and his report were featured in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation investigative story titled “Who Is Guarding Your Money” on November 23, 2008. On December 2, 2008, legislators in Ontario, Canada, discussed this report. On May 16, 2012, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the U.S. invited him to present the findings of his Journal of Finance paper that documents cross-subsidies in mutual fund families. He is now an official whistleblower.

Prof. Bhattacharya is an excellent teacher. He has been nominated for the Trustee Teaching Award by Indiana University five years in a row. He won in 2004 and 2008. In 2006, Business Week recognized him as a “prominent faculty.” Prof. Bhattacharya teaches in a different country every summer. He has taught at top universities in Argentina, Brazil, China, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Russia, Taiwan, Turkey and the USA (Chicago, Duke and MIT.)

Prof. Bhattacharya’s goal is to spread the gospel of honest finance to every corner of the globe.

Vikrant Vig

Professor of Finance, London Business School

Dr Vikrant Vig’s research interests lie in the area of financial contracting and include: financial intermediation, firm’s choice of optimal debt structure, corporate governance, and law and finance. His current research focuses on the sub-prime mortgage market in the US where he investigates how securitisation affects the incentives of different agents in the supply-chain of credit.

Vikrant has won several awards for his research on Securitisation. In 2008, his paper titled Did Securitisation Lead to Lax Screening: Evidence from Subprime Loans, won the best paper award at the European Finance Association meetings. The paper also won several other awards, such as the Mitsui Best Paper Award at the University of Michigan conference.

Dr Vig’s research on securitisation was cited in a number of congressional hearings in the US on the optimal policy response to the current housing crisis. More recently, his paper on the effect of labour regulations on capital structure, won the best paper award at the European Finance Association 2010 meetings.

At the London Business School, Vikrant teaches the Investments (core) course to full-time Masters in Finance students and a specialised Financial Economics course to PhD students. In 2009 and 2011, Vikrant was the runner-up for the best teaching award in the Masters in Finance programme.

Carlo Acerbi 
Managing Director and Head of Risk Management, MSCI Group

Plenary Session: 23rd December 2023

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Sanjay Kallapur, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, India

Topic: The state of Accounting/Finance research in India, and how to get to the next level

Prof. Sanjay Kallapur is a faculty member at the Indian School of Business (ISB) since 2005. He was earlier an Associate Professor at the Krannert School of Management, Purdue University. His research in the area of financial and managerial accounting, auditing, corporate governance, and risk management. His research is published in top accounting journals and cited over 3,000 times. The American Accounting Association recently published his monograph on scientific inference in accounting research beyond the use of p-values.

He is the founding editor-in-chief of Accounting Theory and Practice, a research journal focusing on India, published by Elsevier. He has been an editor of The Accounting Review from 2008 to 2011. He serves on the Board of IDBI Bank in the area of risk management and audit. He previously served on the Board of the Life Insurance Corporation of India too. He was an International Council Member-at-large of the American Accounting Association from 2018 to 2021. He has served as an associate dean for almost a decade at ISB. He started the PhD-equivalent Fellow Programme in Management at ISB and has placed his students in faculty positions at the London School of Economics, IESEG Paris, Aalto University, University of Queensland, University of Western Australia, and IIM Udaipur. He has a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard Business School, and B.Com. and M.M.S. degrees from Mumbai University. He is professionally qualified as a Fellow Member of the Institute of Cost Accountants of India (FCMA).

Professor Manju Puri

Title: “A Tale of Two Runs: Depositor Responses to Bank Solvency Risk”
Co – Authors: Raj Iyer and Nick Ryan.

Abstract:
In this paper we examine how depositor composition affects bank fragility.  We examine a bank that has both low and high solvency risk shocks to see if depositors behave uniformly in the two shocks. We find differential behavior in high and low solvency-risk shocks from depositors who have loans and bank staff.  In contrast depositors with older accounts and those with more frequent past transactions run more, irrespective of the underlying solvency risk.  Our results suggest depositor composition affects bank fragility and helps characterize stable deposits.

Professor Raman Uppal

Title: “Comparing Different Regulatory Measures to Control Stock Market
Volatility: A General Equilibrium Analysis”
Co – Authors: Adrian Buss, Bernard Dumas and Grigory Vilkov

Abstract:
In this paper, we compare the effects of different regulatory measures used to reduce excess volatility of stock-market returns, which is generated by investors trading on sentiment. The regulatory measures we study are the Tobin tax, shortsale constraints, and leverage constraints. The main contribution of our research is to evaluate these regulatory measures within the same dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium model of a production economy, so that one can compare both the direct and indirect effects of the different measures on the financial and real sectors within the same economic setting. We find that of the three measures we consider, only the leverage constraint is effective in reducing stock-market volatility, and this is accompanied by positive effects on the real sector: an increase in the levels of consumption growth and investment growth, and a decrease in their volatilities. In contrast, both the Tobin tax and shortsale constraints increase volatility in financial markets, and have negative effects on the real sector: a decrease in the growth rates of output and investment and an increase in the volatility of consumption-growth.

Siva Nathan is a accounting professor at Georgia State University located in Atlanta, Georgia. Nathan’s teaching interest focuses on financial accounting. His research interests include studying the effects of accounting numbers on stock prices, and financial analysts’ earnings forecasts and investment recommendations. He has published numerous articles in publications such as the Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research and Contemporary Accounting Research.

Nathan is a recipient of the American Accounting Association Competitive Manuscript Award, and he has been widely cited in the business press for his research on the behavior of financial analysts. Dr. Nathan received his Ph.D from State University of New York at Buffalo and management degree from University of Rochester.

Dr. Sudhakara Reddy is currently assistant professor in the Finance and Control group of IIM Calcutta. He was a visiting scholar to Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University during 2011-2012. His current areas of research are Market Microstructure, Corporate finance with an emphasis on corporate governance mechanisms, Initial public Offerings and primary capital markets, etc. He has several research papers to his credit in reputed journals. He has conducted several MDP programs for reputed companies and trained several faculty members in the area of research in financial economics and research methods. He won couple of research awards from reputed institutes as well as Best faculty award from IBS Alumni federation. He participated and presented papers at several international conferences. He is currently the consulting editor of IUP journal of Applied Finance and ad-hoc reviewer for International Review of Economics & Finance, Managerial Finance, International Journal of Managerial Finance, Afro-Asian Journal of Finance & Accounting, and Global Business Review

Iftekhar Hasan holds the title of university professor at Fordham University, where he also serves as the E. Gerald Corrigan Chair in Finance, academic director of the PhD program, and co-director of the Center for Research in Contemporary Finance at the Gabelli School of Business. He further serves as a scientific advisor at the Central Bank of Finland, as a fractional faculty member at the University of Sydney, as a research fellow at the Financial Institution Center at the Wharton School as well as at the IWH Institute in Halle, Germany. He is the managing editor of the Journal of Financial Stability and has served as an associate editor with several other reputed academic journals.

Professor Hasan’s research interests are in the areas of financial institutions, corporate finance, capital markets, and emerging economies focusing on interdisciplinary questions and public policy issues. He has been involved with numerous academic research grants from different governmental, national, and international science foundations and organizations in the U.S. and abroad. Hasan has more than 450 publications in print, including 16 books and edited volumes, and more than 330 peer-reviewed articles in significant academic journals in finance (JFE, JFQA, RF, JB), accounting (JAR, RAST, CAR), economics (JME, JIE, JEG, JMCB), international business (JIBS), management (SMJ, JoM, HRM, RP, JBE), operation research (MS), and information systems (JIMS).

Professor Hasan has held visiting faculty positions at several universities around the world, including the University of Rome, Italy; the University of Strasbourg, France; the University of Carlos III, Madrid; EPFL at Lausanne, Switzerland; Hong Kong Polytechnic University; the University of Limoges, France; National Taiwan University at Taipei; the University of Romania at Bucharest; Xi’an Jiaotong University, China; University Utara Malaysia; the University of Sydney, Australia; and NYU’s Stern School of Business. Professor Hasan has also been a consultant or a visiting scholar for numerous international organizations, including the World Bank, the IMF, the United Nations, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the Office of the Comptroller of Currency of the U.S. Treasury, the Banque de France, Development Bank of Japan, and the Italian Deposit Insurance Corporation.

A Fulbright scholar and a Fulbright selector, Professor Hasan has also earned distinction as a Changjiang Scholar in China, a Louis Bachelier Fellow in France, a Shimomura Fellow in Japan, and a Bursa Malaysia Chair in Malaysia. He also received a Doctor Honoris Causa degree from the Romanian American University in Bucharest.

Terrance Odean is the Rudd Family Foundation Professor of Finance at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an advisory editor of the Financial Planning Review, a member of the Journal of Investment Consulting editorial advisory board and of the Russell Sage Behavioral Economics Roundtable, and is a Wall Street Journal Expert Panelist. In 2016, he received the James R. Vertin Award from the CFA Institute for research notable for its relevance and enduring value to investment professionals. He has been an editor and an associate editor of the Review of Financial Studies, an associate editor of the Journal of Finance, a co-editor of a special issue of Management Science, an associate editor at the Journal of Behavioral Finance, a director of UC Berkeley’s Experimental Social Science Laboratory, a member of the Russell Investments Academic Advisory Board, a member of the WU Gutmann Center Academic Advisory Board at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, a visiting professor at the University of Stavanger, Norway, chair of the Haas Finance Group, and the Willis H. Booth Professor of Finance and Banking. As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, Odean studied judgment and decision making with the 2002 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Daniel Kahneman.

Prof. Joshy Jacob is a faculty member in the Finance & Accounting area at IIMA since April 2008. Prof. Joshy’s teaching and research interests are in behavioural finance, corporate finance, and empirical asset pricing. He has published many papers in leading international finance journals on issues related to asset pricing, market micro structure, corporate finance, and household financial behaviour. He is currently working on several research projects which examine the influence of irrational behaviour on both managerial decisions and stock market returns. He, jointly with colleagues, maintains a regularly updated data library that tracks the performance of the Indian equity market for the use of researchers. He is an Associate Editor of IIMB Management Review and is also the Editor of Vikalpa. He maintains a keen interest on applied issues in finance. He has served on expert sub-committees set by the Govt. of India and Niti Ayog.

Prof. Joshy is a Fellow from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow. He was awarded the Bharti Foundation Scholarship during the Fellow programme for outstanding academic performance.

Professor Simi Kedia

Professor – Albert R. Gamper Chair

Rutgers Business School

Simi Kedia is the Albert R. Gamper Chair in Business at Rutgers Business School. She has also been a faculty at Harvard Business School. Professor Kedia’s research interests are in empirical corporate finance and span corporate governance, financial misconduct, credit ratings, proxy voting and hedge fund activism. Her research has been cited in the popular press, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New Yorker, Forbes, Fortune, Financial Times, CNBC and NPR Market Place.

Key awards include Brenan Award for the Best Paper published in Review of Finance Studies in 2009, Dean’s Meritorious Research Award 2016, 2013, 2011 at Rutgers Business School, Distinguished Referee Award 2012 from Review of Financial Studies and 2012 Glen McLaughlin Prize for Research in Accounting Ethics.

She is an Associate Editor for Management Science. She has also served as an Associate Editor for Review of Financial Studies and Financial Management. She also serves on the board of Financial Management Association.

S.P. Kothari is Gordon Y Billard Professor of Accounting and Finance at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Professor Kothari has senior executive experience in government, academia, and industry with expertise in strategic and policy issues, securities regulation, auditing, and corporate governance. Most recently, he served as Chief Economist and Director of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis at the US Securities and Exchange Commission from 2019 to 2021.

In academia, Kothari was Deputy Dean of MIT Sloan School of Management (2010-15), and previously headed the Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting at MIT Sloan. In addition, he Co-Chaired the Board of Governors of Asia School of Business, Kuala Lumpur, served as faculty director of the MIT-India Program, and edited the world-renowned academic publication Journal of Accounting & Economics.

In 2008-09, Kothari was global head of equity research for Barclays Global Investors (acquired by BlackRock). The actively managed equity portfolio had in excess of $100 billion in assets, and the research team was comprised of approximately 50 PhDs based in San Francisco, London, and Sydney. Kothari served as a director of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) (2015-19); currently he serves on the boards of Velan Studios and EbixCash; and he has consulted extensively on valuation and reporting, corporate governance, risk management, auditing, and management compensation.

Kothari is a recipient of numerous awards for his scholarship, including India’s Padma Shri award in 2020, Honorary Doctorates from London Business School, University of Cyprus, and University of Technology, Sydney, and the American Accounting Association’s Distinguished Contributions to the Accounting Literature award.

Kothari received his BS in egineering from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science and his MBA (PGDM) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.He earned his PhD from the University of Iowa.

Samit Paul is Assistant Professor, Finance and Control. Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C). He has completed his fellowship from IIM, Lucknow in the area of Finance and Accounting. His primary research interests lie in the area of market risk management, volatility modelling and portfolio management.

Parthapratim Pal is a Professor at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta. He has a PhD in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He has worked in the areas of financial markets and international economics. Before joining IIM, he worked with the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations (ICRIER) and the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT). His recent areas of interest include international trade, regional trade agreements, WTO-related issues and international capital flows. He has a number of publications in nationally and internationally reputed journals and books.

Sheridan Titman is a professor of finance at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the McAllister Centennial Chair in Financial Services at the McCombs School of Business. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Texas, Professor Titman was a Professor at UCLA, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Boston College and spent the 1988-89 academic year in Washington D.C. as the special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy.

Professor Titman’s academic publications include both theoretical and empirical articles on Asset Pricing, Corporate Finance, Real Estate and Energy Finance. He has published over 50 articles in the top professional journals and three books, which are all well-cited by academics and industry professionals.

Professor Titman has served on the editorial boards of leading academic journals, including the Journal of Finance and the Review of Financial Studies, served as an editor of the Review of Financial Studies and was the founding editor of the International Review of Finance.  He has been a board member of the Asian Finance Association, the Financial Management Association, the Western Finance Association, and the American Finance Association and has served as the President of both the Western Finance Association and the American Finance Association.  He is currently the Vice President of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Professor Titman holds a B.S from the University of Colorado and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University.

Marti G. Subrahmanyam

Marti G. Subrahmanyam is the Charles E. Merrill Professor of Finance, Economics and International Business in the Stern School of Business at New York University. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, a post-graduate diploma in business administration from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and a doctorate in finance and economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Subrahmanyam has published numerous articles and books in the area of corporate finance, capital markets and international finance. He has been a visiting professor at leading academic institutions in Australia, England, France, Germany, India, Italy and Singapore, including ESSEC and INSEAD, in France, the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, Università Guido Carli LUISS, in Rome, Italy, University of Konstanz, Germany, Singapore Management University and Churchill College, Cambridge University and the University of Melbourne.

He has served as a consultant to several corporations, industrial groups, and financial institutions in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America. He has served or continues to serve on the boards of several companies, including AION Fund L.P., ICICI Bank Ltd. (NYSE:IBN), ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co. Ltd., Infosys Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: INFY), Nomura Asset Management Inc, and Premier European Capital Ltd. He has served as an advisor to international and government organizations including the Securities and Exchange Board of India. He has taught extensively on executive programs in over twenty countries around the world.

Professor Subrahmanyam currently serves or has served as an Associate Editor of the European Financial Management, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Journal of Finance, Management Science, Journal of Derivatives, Journal of International Finance and Accounting, and Japan and the World Economy. He was the Founding Editor of an academic journal specializing in derivative securities and markets entitled Review of Derivatives Research. His research interests include valuation of corporate securities, options and futures markets, asset pricing, market microstructure, and fixed income markets. He has published several papers in these areas in many of the leading international journals in economics and finance, including Econometrica, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and The Review of Financial Studies. His recent books include Recent Advances in Corporate Finance (Irwin, l985) and Financial Options: From Theory to Practice (Dow Jones-Irwin, l992).

Sudipto Dasgupta

Prof Sudipto Dasgupta is Chair Professor of Finance and Director of Centre for Asian Financial Markets at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Professor Dasgupta taught at the Department of Finance and Business Economics at the School of Business and Management of the University of Southern California from 1987-1993. He was Assistant Professor at the department of Finance at HKUST from 1993-97. He then re-joined the department in 2000 as Associate Professor of Finance, after serving as the State Bank of India Chair Professor of Finance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in India for two years. He has been a visiting professor of Finance at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Sweden, on several occasions. Professor Dasgupta received his PhD from the Department of Economics at the University of Southern California of Southern California in 1987. Before obtaining his PhD, he received his MA in Economics from the University of Calcutta, India, in 1980 and his BA from Presidency College, Calcutta, India, in 1977.

Professor Dasgupta’s research interests are mainly in the areas of Corporate Finance, Applied Microeconomics, Game Theory, Auction Theory and Industrial Organization. He has worked on optimal auction methods for government procurement, financial policy of companies, the theory of joint venture formation and breakdowns, corporate governance, bidding for takeover targets and emerging market issues.

He has a number of publications in journals like Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, etc.

Ravi Jagannathan
Professor of Finance, Northwestern University

Ravi Jagannathan is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange/John F. Sandner Professor of Finance and a Co-Director of the Financial Institutions and Markets Research Center. Before joining the Kellogg faculty, Professor Jagannathan was the Piper Jaffray Professor of Finance at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Concurrent with his position at the University of Minnesota he served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Professor Jagannathan’s research interests are in the areas of asset pricing, capital markets, financial institutions, and portfolio performance evaluation. His articles have appeared in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, and Review of Financial Studies. His research has received extensive coverage in advanced textbooks on finance and economics. He has participated as an invited faculty member at Financial Management Association doctoral consortiums.

He has served on the editorial boards of leading academic journals. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the American Finance Association, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, and President of the Society of Financial Studies. He has served on the advisory group on Share Based Compensation at the International Accounting Standards Board. Professor Jagannathan is a member of the American Finance Association, the Western Finance Association, and the Econometrics Society. He has served as a consultant to several companies in the financial services sector.

Professor Jagannathan received his Ph.D. and M.S. at Carnegie-Mellon University, his M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, and his B.E. from the University of Madras, India.

Kose John
Professor of Banking and Finance, New York University

Kose John is the Charles William Gerstenberg Professor of Banking and Finance at New York University Stern School of Business and teaches courses in corporate finance.

Dr. John has been with NYU Stern for more than 20 years. Areas of his recent research include corporate governance, corporate bankruptcy, executive compensation, and corporate disclosure. He has also done research in the areas of financial markets and financial theory. He has published over a hundred articles in several top journals including American Economic Review, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies and Financial Management. He was awarded the prestigious Jensen Prize for the best paper published in Journal of Financial Economics in 2000. In addition to his research, Dr. John has been recognized for his excellence in teaching and received the Citibank Excellence in Teaching Award in 1996.

Dr. John received his Bachelor of Science in physics from the University of Kerala, India, his masters in computer science from the Florida Institute of Technology, and his Doctor of Philosophy in management science from the University of Florida.

Prasanna Tantri is the Senior Associate Director of the Center for Analytical Finance (CAF) at Indian School of Business. He is also heading NSE-ISB Trading Laboratory at Indian School of Business. He has completed his PGP (MBA) from Indian School of Business (Class of 2011). He was associated with ICICI Prudential in his previous assignment. He is an active columnist in leading business newspapers such as Times of India, Economic Times, and Mint to name a few.

He works in the area of financial inter-mediation and market micro-structure. He is also an algorithmic trader. He is currently working on more than 20 active research projects.

Arnab Bhattacharya is an Assistant Professor in the Finance and Control Group at IIM Calcutta. He is B.Tech. (Hons.) in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur and MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. He has a Fellowship in Finance and Control Area from IIM Calcutta. Prior to joining IIM Calcutta, he was at IIM Indore as an Assistant Professor. Prior to joining academics, he has worked at UBS Securities as an Associate in the Investment Banking Division, and at Tata-Hitachi Construction Machinery as a Production Engineer in their Assembly Operations Unit.

Professor Bin Srinidhi

Title: “Family controlled firms and their effect on reporting and risk”

Abstract:
The talk will be based on two of Professor Srinidhi’s papers: The first one, which has been accepted for publication in the November issue of The Accounting Review, deals with how family ownership affects auditor choice and audit fees. More generally, the talk will focus on how family control affects earnings quality and the reporting incentives.
The second one is a working paper that deals with family firms and crash risk.

Pulak Ghosh is Professor in the Decision Sciences Area at IIMB. His key specializations are in intersection of Big data, Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence and its use in Economics, Finance, Policy and Social Value Creation. He did serve in the editorial board of Journal of the American statistical Association, Journal of the Royal statistical Society and currently serves in the editorial board of Biometrics.

Based on his outstanding and innovative contribution to research, the International Indian Statistical Association awarded him with the “Young Scientist Award” in 2011. Govt of India awarded him the prestigious CR Rao award in 2015 and Econometric Society awarded him the Mahalanobis Award in 2016.

Prior to joining IIMB, he served as Associate Director, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, USA, Assistant Professor, Georgia State University, and Associate Professor at Emory University, USA. He is a visiting faculty at several institutes of international repute.

Saptarshi Purkayastha is Assistant Professor, Strategic Management group, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C). He has completed his PhD from ICFAI University. His primary research interest is investigating the effectiveness of business groups. He is also interested in understanding the impact of business groups’ internationalization on their performance, especially the role of top management.

Tarun Ramadorai
Professor of Financial Economics, University of Oxford

TarunRamadorai is Professor of Financial Economics at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. His main areas of research interest are asset pricing, international finance, hedge funds, and household finance, and he has published papers on these topics in leading international journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies.

Tarun is an Executive Committee member of the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance, a Senior Academic Fellow of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economics Research (ABFER), and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). He is an Economic Advisor to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), and Honorary Advisor to the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi. During 2011 and 2012, he was Visiting Scholar at the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. 

He has a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Williams College, an MPhil in Economics from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University. 

Raghavendra Rau

Title of his talk: Finance, Trust and Society

Abstract of his talk: 

The talk will deal with how finance’s role in society and how social developments such as an emphasis on CSR or gender diversity affect real financial policy and valuation.

Bio:

Professor Rau is the Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Professor of Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School. He is also a past president of the European Finance Association, and a past editor of Financial Management. He is a founder and director of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) and a member of the Cambridge Corporate Governance Network (CCGN).

Before joining the University of Cambridge, Rau was an academic in the US teaching at universities such as the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Los Angeles and Purdue University. He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Delhi University in 1987, an MBA from IIM Bangalore in 1989, and a Ph.D. degree from INSEAD in 1997. He is a past President of the European Finance Association and the program chair for the annual 40th anniversary meetings of the European Finance Association meetings in Cambridge.

Professor Rau was Principal at Barclays Global Investors, then the largest asset manager in the world, in San Francisco from 2008-2009. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Corporate Finance, the Journal of Banking and Finance, Financial Review, the Quarterly Journal of Finance, among others. His research has frequently been covered by the popular press including the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist, among others.

His research, published in journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies, has won several awards including the EFA Barclays Global Investor Award, the Chinese Finance Association Best Paper in Corporate Finance and the Financial Management Association “Best of the Best” Award. He won the Ig Nobel Prize in Management in 2015, a prize awarded for research that makes people laugh, and then think.

Pre-Conference Tutorial Session: 20 December 2023

Speaker: Prof. (Dr) Neerav Nagar

Associate Professor (Finance & Accounting), IIM Ahmedabad

Topic: Accounting Research

Prof. Neerav Nagar is a Fellow of IIM Calcutta. He is currently an Associate Professor at IIM Ahmedabad and has about thirteen years of full-time teaching and research experience. His teaching and research interests lie in the areas of financial accounting, financial statement analysis, corporate governance and earnings management. His research work has been published in leading journals like Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Corporate Governance: An International Review, Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance, Journal of Business Research and Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics.

Plenary Session: 22 December 2023

Key Note Speaker: Prof. (Dr) Suresh Radhakrishnan

Constantine Konstans Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Corporate Governance,

Naveen Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas

Topic: CSR: A Framework and Musings

Suresh Radhakrishnan is the Constantine Konstans Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Corporate Governance and Research Director of the Institute of Excellence in Corporate Governance at the University of Texas at Dallas, Jindal School of Management. Before joining the University of Texas at Dallas, he was a faculty member at the Stern School of Business, New York University, the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Graduate School of Management, Rutgers University.  He was also a Visiting Research Scholar at various leading schools such as City University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Fudan University, Xian Jiaotong University, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta and National University of Singapore.

His research focuses on performance management and spans various areas such as organization capital, corporate social responsibility, valuation of intangible assets, executive compensation, audit liability, and supply chain quality issues. His research has been published in leading academic journals in accounting, operations management, information systems, and strategy. His research on the economic value of corporate giving was the runner-up for the Moskowitz Prize. He has been invited to present his work at leading universities and conferences in the U. S. and overseas.

His research has been covered by the media such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Barrons. He was invited as a knowledge expert at the Microsoft CEO summit and the SAP Global Congress. He is featured in the Who’s Who in Business Professionals in North America and the Who’s Who in Business Higher Education.

He teaches financial statement analysis, valuation, mergers and acquisitions, financial and managerial accounting. He has received teaching awards at the University of Texas at Dallas, New York University, and Rutgers University. He received the Graduate Student Mentor Award at the University of Texas at Dallas.

He received his Ph.D. (Accounting) and M. S. (Statistics and Operations Research) from New York University, Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Madras, India. He is a Chartered Accountant and a Cost and Management Accountant.

Chief Guest Mr. Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, Managing Director and CEO, Bandhan.

Julian Franks

Professor of Finance, London Business School 

Julian Franks is Professor of Finance at the London Business School and the former Director of the Institute of Finance and Accounting at the School. He is widely published, in which his research focuses on bankruptcy and financial distress, corporate ownership and control, cost of capital and regulation. Recently, his work on ownership and control (with Colin Mayer and Stefano Rossi) has won two international prizes. Two of his published papers have been awarded prizes for the ‘best paper’ of the year. He is Associate Editor of five finance journals, a member of various advisory boards and consults widely.

He served as a member of the DTI-Treasury committee for reviewing the UK’s insolvency code and was a member of one of The Company Law Review’s committees on corporate governance. He is an advisor to both Ofcom and BAA on regulatory matters and is on a committee of experts advising the education minister on a PFI investment program for schools. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of California at both Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Dr. Y. V. Reddy is a man who needs no introduction. His name is synonymous with the various reforms and policies in the financial market. He is one of the most celebrated economists in India, an Indian Administrative Services top ranker, a successful bureaucrat and the former deputy governor and governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). In 2010, he was awarded India’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan.

As RBI Chief from 2003 to 2008, Dr. Reddy oversaw a period of high growth, low inflation and a build-up of foreign exchange reserves coupled with a steady rupee and a robust central banking system that withstood the global financial crisis.

Subsequently, he was a Member of the UN Commission of Experts to the President of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System. He was also the Chairman of the Fourteenth Finance Commission in 2013-14. Previously, he worked in the Government of India as Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, and in the Government of Andhra Pradesh as Principal Secretary.  He is also Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Prior to being Governor, Dr. Reddy was Executive Director for India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan at the International Monetary Fund from August 2002. Before this, he was Deputy Governor at the Reserve Bank of India for six years. He has also served as Secretary, Ministry of Finance, and Additional Secretary, Ministry of Commerce in the Government of India. He has also been an advisor to the World Bank.

Hailing from the Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh, Dr. Reddy’s life has been an inspiring journey of personal triumphs and a fascinating professional career. Preceded by his autobiography My Reflections or Naa Gnapakalu, written in Telugu, his latest book, Advice & Dissent — My Life in Policy Making throws immense light on Dr. Reddy’s personality as an economist, the ideas behind various policy initiatives and is an excellent narrative on the key economic reforms.

His talk will be titled as “Financial Sector Reforms in India: In Perspective”.

Vikas Agarwal is H. Talmage Dobbs, Jr. Chair and Professor of Finance at Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business. Vikas received his Ph.D. in finance from the London Business School. He is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Financial Research, University of Cologne, Germany. He also holds a Research Associate position at EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Center, France. He currently serves as a Director on the board of the Southeastern Hedge Fund Association and on the academic advisory council of Decatur Capital Management.

His broad areas of research interest include investments and asset pricing. He has done extensive research on various issues related to institutional investors including hedge funds and mutual funds. His research on hedge funds includes characterization of their risks, performance evaluation, compensation, data biases, portfolio disclosure, liquidity transformation, and investor behavior. His research on mutual funds focuses on issues such as window dressing, portfolio disclosure, managerial multitasking, and liquidity management. His research has been published both in academic and practitioner journals including Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Management Science, Journal of Economic Dynamics & Control, Journal of Empirical Finance, Review of Derivatives Research, Journal of Investment Management, Journal of Alternative Investments, Foundations and Trends in Finance, and Journal of Asset Management. His research has been cited and discussed in the financial press and magazines including Euromoney, Financial Times, Forbes, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Anjan Thakor is the John E. Simon Professor of Finance and director of the Ph.D. program at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Before joining Olin Business School in 2003, Professor Thakor was the Edward J. Frey Professor of Banking and Finance at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, where he also served as chairman of the Finance area. He has served on the faculties of Indiana University, Northwestern University, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Professor Thakor has advised major companies including Whirlpool Corporation, Allison Engine Co., Citigroup, RR Donnelley, Dana Corporation, Anheuser-Busch, Zenith Corporation, Lincoln National Corporation, J.P. Morgan, Landscape Structures, Inc., CIGNA, Borg-Warner Automotive, Waxman Industries, Reuters, The Limited, Ryder Integrated Logistics, AT&T, CH2M Hill, Takata Corporation, Tyson Foods, Spartech, and Bunge. He has also served as an expert witness in federal cases involving banking litigation.

Since 1996, Jay R. Ritter has served as the Joseph Cordell Eminent Scholar in the Department of Finance at the University of Florida. He teaches corporate finance classes at the undergraduate, masters, and PhD level. Prof Ritter is known as “Mr. IPO” for his work on initial public offerings. He is a leading academic authority on the market for newly issued stock. He has previously served on the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois and was a visiting professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. During 2014-15, he is serving as president of the Financial Management Association. He received his BA, MA, and PhD (1981) degrees in economics and finance from the University of Chicago.

Shiva Rajgopal is a Professor in the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. Prior to his appointment at Columbia in 2015, he was the Schaefer Chaired Professor at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University between 2010 and 2015.  He has also been a faculty member at the University of Washington and Duke University.

Professor Rajgopal received a first-class honors degree in Commerce from the University of Bombay, India and is a Chartered Accountant from India.  He holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Iowa.   He is the recipient of the 2006 American Accounting Association (AAA) Notable Contribution to the Literature award, the 2006 Best Paper award from Financial Accounting Research Section of the AAA, and the 2006 Graham and Dodd Scroll Prize given by the Financial Analysts Journal.  He is the recipient of the 2008, 2012 and 2015 Glen McLaughlin Award for Research in Accounting Ethics.  He is listed as the most prolific author in financial accounting over the last 12 years, and 5^th across all years.  Graham, Harvey and Rajgopal (2005) was referenced as the article with the highest citation rate among accounting papers.

He is the Departmental Editor of the Accounting track of Management Science.  He is also an Associate Editor at the Journal of Accounting and Economics and an ex-editor at Contemporary Accounting Research.  He was on the editorial board of The Accounting Review from 2003-2011.  He is interested in issues related to financial reporting, earnings quality, fraud and executive compensation.  He is widely published in finance and accounting journals.  Professor Rajgopal’s research is frequently cited in the popular press, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Fortune, Forbes, Financial Times, Business Week, and the Economist.

Henri Servaes is Professor of Finance at London Business School. He holds a BBA from European University and a MSIA and PhD in finance from Purdue University.

His areas of interest include corporate control, corporate diversification, initial public offerings, capital structure, and mutual funds. He has published articles on these topics in all the leading finance journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies.

He serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Finance, Financial Management and a number of other finance journals. His work has been presented at all major international finance conferences and at more than 50 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, and taught in MBA programs in Russia and the Czech Republic, and in doctoral programs in Belgium and Switzerland.

He has been involved in consulting and executive education for Anglo American plc, the Chase Manhattan Bank, Deutsche Bank AG, The Financial Times (Lex Team), First Union Corporation, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, SG Hambros, and Suez, SA, among others. At London Business School, he teaches corporate finance in the Masters in Finance Programme, the Senior Executive Programme, and the Corporate Finance Evening Programme.

Vidhu Shekhar, CFA, is the country head of CFA Institute in India. He is responsible for advancing CFA Institute’s mission and supporting CFA charter holders in India.

Mr. Shekhar is an investment professional with over 30 years of industry experience in India and abroad. Prior to his current role, he served as Vice President, New Products and Business Excellence at National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India. In this role he was responsible for new product initiatives in debt and equity markets for the exchange and also led an enterprise wide Business Excellence program. While at NSE, Mr Shekhar contributed to the development of Indian financial markets through his participation in the work of various committees, including the Dr. Patil Committee on Corporate Bonds and Securitization, and the Raghuram Rajan Committee on Financial Sector Reforms. In prior roles, Mr Shekhar has served as Senior Vice President at IDBI Capital Markets and Managing Director at E*Trade Systems India Limited. He has also served as the Vice President of CFA Society India.

Mr. Shekhar completed his postgraduate diploma in management (PGDM) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in 1987 and holds a bachelor’s degree in physics (Honours) from the University of Delhi.