New Head of School

Welcome to Professor Neal Stoughton. Professor Alec Cameron, Dean of the Australian School of Business, has announced the appointment of Neal Stoughton to the Macquarie Group Chair in Financial Services.

Master Class in Mergers and Acquisitions Research

This short seminar on research in mergers and acquisitions will provide a broad perspective on the findings from several decades of study. Jarrad Harford (Professor and Marion B Ingersoll Chair in Finance) from the University of Washington Business School will present the class at the Australian School of Business on 3 and 4 November 2008. Please view the Event Summary for details and registration instructions.

Professor Fariborz Moshirian to collaborate with the World Bank and the IMF staff on the recent global financial crisis

Given the recent global financial market turmoil, a major conference is organised by the World Bank and the IMF on "Financial Globalisation, Risk Aanlysis and Management". This forum will be held on 2 and 3 October at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington DC.

This major Conference is very timely given the sub-prime credit problems and the uncertainty about the current global financial market outlook. Key policy makers from the World Bank and the IMF such as Jaime Caruana (Counselor and Director, Monetary and Capital Markets Department, Consolate Rusagara (Director, FPD, World Bank), Fernando Montes-Negret (Director, World Bank), Christopher Towe (Deputy Director, MCM, IMF), Olivier Blanchard (Economic Counsellor, IMF), Augusto de la Torre (Chief Economist, Latin America Region, World Bank) as well as leading academics will be discussing the issues associated with the sub-prime and current global financial turmoil.

Professor Fariborz Moshirian from the Australian School of Business, Dr Stijn Claessens, from the IMF and Dr Asli Demirguc-Kunt, the Head of Research at the World Bank will be editing a special issue of the Journal of Banking and Finance (JBF) on the above theme. The issues to be discussed at this conference and in this special issue of the JBF include the current global financial turmoil, financial globalisation, sub-prime credit problems, risk analyses, techniques for assessing countries’ financial vulnerabilities, and financial cycles, among other topics.

Top Results in the Good Universities Guide

Graduates from the Australian School of Business command Australia’s highest starting salaries in key business disciplines, according to latest rankings published in the influential Good Universities Guide.

Professor Ernst Maug visiting from the University of Mannheim

The School is honoured to have Ernst Maug visit for the second half of 2008. Ernst is Professor for Corporate Finance at the University of Mannheim, Germany.

During his visit he will teach the MBA course "Corporate Valuation" for semester 2, 2008. Ernst will also give a seminar on September 25, and hold a Workshop for PhD students and younger researchers on September 9 and 10.

The Time-Varying Correlation and Volatility Symposium

In recent times there has been much focus placed upon the time-varying nature of correlations and volatility in finance, economics and accounting. The purpose of this symposium is to bring together academics, practitioners and policy-setters who have an interest in the area.

www.banking.unsw.edu.au/FinanceSymposium

Endeavour Research Fellow to be Representative at Nobel Laureates Meeting
Jingyun Ma is a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Banking and Finance and a PhD candidate in The School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University Research. She has been selected to attend the 3rd Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Economic Sciences in Lindau, Germany and St Gallen, Switzerland from 20 to 23 August 2008 as a Young Researcher. Thirteen Nobel Laureates in Economics will be in attendance as well as Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Yunus.

For more information on the Nobel Laureate Meetings please visit their website.
http://www.lindau-nobel.de/

Researchers Granted FINSIA Publication Award

Julia and Thomas Henker of the School of Banking and Finance recently won a 2007 FINSIA Publication Award for their article entitled "Calling the End of the Bubble: Are There Trends in Order Imbalances?".

Congratulations to Thomas and Julia on this splendid achievement.

UNSW Banking and Finance Team Win Indexing Prize

A Banking and Finance team of researchers won a major award at last week's 12th IMN Super Bowl of Indexing conference in Arizona. They won the William F. Sharpe Award for the best index-related research paper. The judging panel included 1990 Nobel prize winner for economics sciences Bill Sharpe, and a panel of other distinguished academics including Malkiel, Chance, Shiller, Whaley, Stoll, Haslem etc.

The paper was authored by Kingsley Fong, David Gallagher and Adrian Lee, "Benchmarking Benchmarks: Measuring Characteristic Selectivity Using Portfolio Holdings Data", and is available on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=975393

Australasian Finance and Banking Conference

The School of Banking and Finance at the University of New South Wales recently hosted their annual Finance and Banking Conference. The conference was a huge success, providing over 250 international academics and industry with the opportunity to meet in Sydney to share their research and interest in finance related fields. If you would like to find out more about last years event, you can here.

A call for papers is now out for the upcoming 22nd Australasian Finance and Banking Conference to be held in Sydney on December 16, 17, and 18, 2009. For details of the current conference, including information about submission and registration, please visit the AFBC website.

The school would like to give particular thanks and recognition to Professor Fariborz Moshirian, the Conference Convener for his skilled running of the 2008 event.