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.