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Keynote Speakers

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.


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.


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.