The Finance subject group

Grants and awards

• Raghavendra Rau: Vice-President, Financial Management Association, 2023
• Raghavendra Rau: Distinguished Alumnus Award, Indian Institute of Management, 2022
• David Chambers and Elroy Dimson: Graham & Dodd Best Perspectives Award for the paper “The British origins of the US endowment model”, 2015
• Jenny Chu, Jonathan Faasse and Raghavendra Rau: FMA Competitive Paper in Corporate Finance Award for the paper “Do compensation consultants enable higher CEO pay? New evidence from recent disclosure rule changes”, 2015
• Pedro Saffi (with Scott Richardson and Kari Sigurdsson): “Deleveraging risk” awarded one of two Best Paper Awards, Financial Management Association International (FMA) Consortium for European Finance Faculty, 2014; also awarded the Crowell Third Prize, 2015
• Raghavendra Rau: President, European Finance Association, 2014
• Geoff Meeks and Amir Amel-Zadeh: “Bank failure, mark-to-market and the financial crisis” awarded the Annual Manuscript Award for the best article published in Abacus in 2013
• Farzad Saidi: JEEA Excellence in Refereeing Award, 2013
• Bang Dang Nguyen (with Q.-A. Do and Yen-Teik Lee): “Political connections and firm value: evidence from regression discontinuity design of close gubernatorial elections” awarded Best Corporate Finance Paper Award at the Society of Financial Studies Finance Cavalcade, 2013
• David Chambers and Elroy Dimson (with Antti Ilmanen): “The Norway model” voted an Outstanding Article by the readers of the Journal of Portfolio Management for its evaluation of the strategies followed by Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), including its long-term performance and response to the financial crisis, 2013
• Raghavendra Rau: Vice-President, European Finance Association, 2013
• Bart Lambrecht: CEPR Research Fellow, 2013-present
• David Chambers: Thomas K. McCraw Fellow, Harvard Business School, 2012
• Pedro Saffi: Q-Group Grant, The Role of Institutional Investors in Voting: Evidence from the Securities Lending Market, with Reena Aggarwal and Jason Sturgess of Georgetown University, 2012
• David Chambers: Ashton Prize for the best article in the last 2 years by an early career researcher published in The Economic History Review (for “Gentlemanly capitalism revisited”), 2011
• Bang Nguyen: Xia Yihong Best Paper Award for the paper “The value of independent directors: evidence from sudden deaths,” China International Conference in Finance (organised by MIT Sloan School of Management and Tsinghua University), Guangzhou, China, July 2009
• Bart Lambrecht (with Stewart Myers): “A theory of takeovers and disinvestment” (Journal of Finance, 62(2)) awarded an Emerald Citation of Excellence from Emerald Management Reviews, 2008
• David Chambers: Coller Institute of Private Equity Research Award, 2007
• David Chambers: Economic History Society New Researcher Prize, 2005

Conference organisation

• Raghavendra Rau: Programme Chair, Financial Management Association, 2023
• Raghavendra Rau: Programme Chair, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance Annual Workshop, 2015-2023
• Raghavendra Rau: Programme Chair, FMA Asian Conference, Doctoral Consortium, 2019
• Raghavendra Rau: Programme Chair, Annual FMA-Napa Conference on Financial Markets, 2012-2016
• Raghavendra Rau: Programme Chair, FM Writer’s Workshop, 2014-2015
• Raghavendra Rau: Programme Chair, European Finance Association Meeting, 2013
• Gishan Dissanaike: Programme Co-Chair, Conference on National Governance Bundles, Corporate Governance: An International Review (CGIR), Cambridge, 2012
• Gishan Dissanaike: Programme Co-Chair, European Financial Management Association Symposium on Corporate Governance and Control, 2009
• Raghavendra Rau: Programme Chair, Financial Management Association European Meeting, 2006

Research centres

Faculty members from the Finance group engage with practitioners in various sectors and exchange knowledge with them both as individual researchers and through the research centres they lead and are a part of, notably the:

• Centre for Endowment Asset Management
• Cambridge Centre for Finance
• Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance
• Centre for Finance, Technology & Regulation. 

Recent and current examples of engagement include:

Faculty members from the Finance group engage with practitioners in various sectors and exchange knowledge with them both as individual researchers and through the research centres they lead and are a part of, notably:

• Dr David Chambers has 20 years’ experience in investment banking and, as Academic Co-Director of the Centre for Endowment Asset Management, has engaged with several Oxford and Cambridge colleges and National Sovereign Funds, to help them manage their endowment. He has also supported the responsible investment practices of institutional investors through the publication of a case study on strategies for responsible investing.
• Dr Othman Cole has experience in investment banking and has consulted for a number of companies in risk management, real estate, and energy. He is also a partner in a firm that deals in M&A and capital raising for small-to medium-sized companies, and he conducted research on state-owned oil companies and on country-level projects.
• Professor Elroy Dimson chairs the Policy and Academic Boards of FTSE Russell and advises Credit Suisse and, formerly, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund. He has held board and investment positions at Atlantic Philanthropies, Edward Jones, Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, German Investment Trust, Gonville & Caius College, Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation, Mobil-Exxon, Russell Investments, Sparrows Capital, Triple Point, and Wealth Management Group. His guidance to investors includes the Global Investment Returns Yearbook, LBS Risk Measurement Service and Numis Smaller Companies Index, and he has 3000 media cites in 70 countries including the Financial Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, and Barron’s. He is an Honorary Fellow of CFA UK and the Institute & Faculty of Actuaries.
• Professor Gishan Dissanaike has been consulted by a number of international corporations, investment banks, and regulatory agencies. He previously worked for Banque Indosuez (now Crédit Agricole Indosuez) and has managed the Cadbury Archive, donated by Sir Adrian Cadbury to the University of Cambridge.
• Dr Oğuzhan Karakaş is the Co-Director of the Centre for Endowment Asset Management and has served as a part-time consultant to a hedge fund on establishing trading strategies. His papers co-authored with Professor Elroy Dimson and Dr Xi Li on active ownership and co-ordinated engagements have won several industry prizes and shaped the behaviours of shareholders interested in ESG investing by discussing strategies to engage with investee companies.
• Dr Andrei Kirilenko served as Chief Economist of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and spent over a decade working at the International Monetary Fund. His recent work led to the development of an app-based recommendation framework for investor adoption of crypto assets.
• Professor Raghavendra Rau worked as Principal at Barclays Global Investors. He frequently engages with international media to provide comments on areas of expertise and his work featured in prominent outlets such as The Economist and The Washington Post. Each year (2022-2025) in his capacity as the Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business, he delivers the Gresham lectures at Gresham College in London.
• Dr Pedro Saffi’s professional experience includes working as a part-time consultant for Mondrian Investment Partners, working on quantitative trading strategies validation and implementation, and serving on the advisory board of a hedge fund that uses machine learning methods to trade cryptocurrencies. Previously, he was a corporate valuation expert for the United Nation’s Permanent Court of Arbitration, for real estate companies, and for pharmaceutical companies, and he worked as a part-time academic consultant for the Brazilian stock change (B3), evaluating the impact of regulatory changes on market quality. Before his PhD, he also worked for Banco Icatu, a Brazilian investment bank.
• Professor Lucio Sarno has been involved in policy advice, training, research and consulting projects for a number of institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Central Bank, the US Federal Reserve Banks of New York and St. Louis, the Bank for International Settlements, the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, the Central Bank of Norway, the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance, the European Commission, the Bank of Korea, and the Central Bank of Colombia. He has wide-ranging consulting experience in the finance industry, involving some of the world’s leading asset management firms, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, investment banks, and their research units. Lucio has held full-time senior positions outside academia, including as Director of Currency Research and Principal at AXA Investment Managers. His research has often been featured or quoted in the press, including the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
• Dr Simon Taylor’s research on the history of nuclear power in the UK has helped the government, analysts, investors and the general public learn about Britain’s experience with nuclear power. His book – The Fall and Rise of Nuclear Power in Britain – has informed policy makers, investors and economists.
• Dr Robert Wardrop, as Director of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, has collaborated with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (now the Foreign & Commonwealth Development Office), the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on research projects on FinTech, which influenced the work of regulators, policy makers and practitioners. Additionally, he has led the development of a database of FinTech regulation worldwide and of the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), which provides a real-time estimate of the electricity consumed by the bitcoin network. By developing and teaching the Cambridge FinTech & Regulatory Innovation (CFTRI) programme, he has also engaged with over 800 senior policymakers and regulators at central banks, security agencies and ministries of finance, from 130 countries.