Professor Bart Lambrecht wins BAFA Distinguished Academic Award

A prestigious honour in accounting and finance

Professor Lambrecht’s extensive research and editorial contributions have played a crucial role in advancing the field, making Bart a deserving recipient of this year’s honour.

Professor Lambrecht is Head of the Finance subject group at Cambridge Judge Business School, Director of the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance and a Fellow of CEPR. His research interests span a range of corporate finance topics, including investment under uncertainty, mergers and acquisitions, payout policy, and the role of asymmetric information.

In response to receiving the award, Professor Lambrecht said:

“I am truly honoured to receive the 2025 BAFA Distinguished Academic Award from the British Accounting and Finance Association. This recognition of my research and contributions to the academic accounting and finance community in the UK is deeply meaningful to me. Being acknowledged by the UK’s leading academic association in this field is a source of great pride and gratitude.”

A career of academic excellence

Professor Lambrecht’s career spans Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge and the University of Lancaster; and the University of Calgary, UCLA, and MIT Sloan, where he held visiting positions. Bart’s academic journey began with a BA from the University of Antwerp, followed by an MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Beyond his teaching and research, Professor Lambrecht has made significant contributions to top academic journals: Bart is currently an editor of the Journal of Business Finance and Accounting and an associate editor of the Journal of Banking and Finance. Previously, he served as editor of the Journal of Corporate Finance and as an associate editor of Financial Management and the Review of Finance. As the founder and lead organiser of the annual Cambridge Corporate Finance Theory Symposium, now in its 12th edition, Bart has made a valuable contribution to the research environment for finance academics in the UK and beyond.

Impactful research in corporate finance

Professor Lambrecht has published papers on a variety of topics and his research has shaped corporate finance in key areas, including:

• the impact of strategic behaviour and competition for the valuation and exercise of real options
• the role of product market competition and human capital for corporate capital structure
• the timing and dynamics of corporate restructurings (including takeovers, mergers, outsourcing decisions, corporate bankruptcies, and bank insolvency resolution mechanisms)
• exploration of how agency and strategic considerations influence corporate restructurings
• the development of theories that generate the celebrated Lintner (1956) dividend model: one theory showing how Lintner-style payout smoothing results from managerial risk aversion or asymmetric information and habit formation; the other theory showing that this type of payout and income smoothing can also result from asymmetric information and learning between inside and outside shareholders
• most recently, the dynamics of financial policies and group decisions in private firms and professional partnerships

Bart’s research has been published in top-tier academic journals, including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Management Science, Review of Finance, and Review of Financial Studies.