PhD in Finance - Premia Capital Management, LLC
Transcription
PhD in Finance - Premia Capital Management, LLC
EDHEC-Risk Institute N PhD in Finance E W S L E T T E R June/August 2012 In this issue: Editorial ..................................................................................................................................................... 1 Core faculty strengthened ......................................................................................................................... 4 Faculty and student interviews .................................................................................................................. 5 Programme and faculty news .................................................................................................................... 8 EDHEC-Risk Institute news ........................................................................................................................ 11 EDHEC Business School news .................................................................................................................... 15 Important information for prospective applicants .................................................................................... 16 A rich new harvest Over the last ten years, EDHEC-Risk Institute has generated new knowledge and brought academic advances in the field of investment management to practitioners, by combining research with outreach and executive education activities. Its educational effort culminated with the launch of the PhD in Finance in 2008, a programme designed to offer industry professionals the opportunity to become autonomous researchers by following a rigorous doctoral curriculum while remaining in their jobs. The main achievement of any doctoral programme is the authoring of a dissertation, a work that makes a significant contribution to the body of knowledge and demonstrates not only mastery of the research techniques in the field but also the ability to articulate and substantiate original thinking. While the EDHEC-Risk Institute PhD in Finance allows participants to work on fundamental research pursuits, its differentiating ambition is to train a new breed of practitioners who will be combining their practical, in-field expertise with the knowledge and research skills acquired through the programme to exert thought-leadership and introduce radical innovation in the finance industry. In the course of the last calendar year, five programme participants from the inaugural class successfully defended their theses. René Garcia, Academic Director, EDHEC-Risk Institute PhD in Finance and Professor of Finance, EDHEC Business School Gideon Ozik wrote two essays on hedge funds. In his first essay, Dr Ozik advances that share restrictions can adversely induce information asymmetry between managers and their clients about future fund flows. Focusing on share-restricted funds, the paper demonstrates that funds with recent outflows underperform funds with recent inflows by about 5.6% annually over 1998-2008. No such return spread is observed for funds with low-share restriction. As managers may also act as investors in their own funds, the information asymmetry potentially allows them to profit by trading ahead of their clients. These results highlight the significance of the recent SEC Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 1 - allegations of flow-front-running activity by hedge-fund insiders. The paper was presented at the 2012 meeting of the American Finance Association, the most prestigious academic conference devoted to financial economics, and at the Fourth Annual Conference on Hedge Funds in Paris. Dr Ozik’s second paper looks at the relationship between the media coverage of funds and their future performance. Applying textual analysis to news items, it documents several types of media biases and uncovers valuable information embedded in media coverage not yet exploited by investors. This paper and related work were presented at the CRSP Forum of the University of Chicago, at the Third Annual Conference on Hedge Funds in Paris and at the European Winter Finance Summit, among others. In early 2012, Dr Ozik left his position as Head of Investment Solutions for the USD3bn alternative investment manager Nexar Capital Group (now part of UBP) to start Alphanes, a big-data start-up serving large institutions by turning some of the ideas initiated in the dissertation process into an innovative investment process. Daniel Mantilla-Garcia studied idiosyncratic volatility and the predictability of returns in a paper that documents that the cross-sectional dispersion of stock returns can be regarded as a consistent and efficient estimator for idiosyncratic volatility. This new measure is model-free and observable at any frequency. Empirically, it provides a very good proxy for average idiosyncratic risk and predicts aggregate returns well, especially at the daily frequency. The paper also provides evidence that idiosyncratic risk is a positively rewarded risk factor. This paper has been presented at the Financial Econometrics Conference organised by the Toulouse School of Economics and the annual meeting of the European Finance Association, among others. The second essay by Dr Mantilla-Garcia, joint with another EDHEC-Risk Institute PhD in Finance alumnus, Dr Vijay Vaidyanathan, deals with the power of the dividend price ratio to predict future stock returns. Most studies on return predictability assume that predictor variables follow stationary processes with constant long run means. In view of recent evidence of the role of structural breaks in the dividend-price ratio mean, the paper proposes an estimation method that explicitly incorporates the uncertainty about the location and magnitude of structural breaks in the predictor in order to extract the regime mean component of the dividend-price ratio. Adjusting for structural changes in the ratio’s mean and estimation error improves the predictive explanatory power in-sample and out-of-sample to a very significant extent. Having completed his residential track service with EDHEC-Risk Institute, Dr Mantilla-Garcia joined Koris International as Head of Research and Development. Koris International is a boutique investment advisor specialising in dynamic asset allocation, which has recently signed strategic partnerships with Rothschild and Lyxor Asset Management. Advisors and dissertation committee members Kelvin Foo Chiah Shiung: Advisor and committee chair: PhD in Finance Academic Director Professor René Garcia – External examiner: Tim Bollerslev, Professor of Finance, Fuqua School of Business and Juanita and Clifton Kreps Distinguished Professor of Economics, Duke University – Other committee member: Professor Robert Kimmel, EDHEC Business School. Daniel Mantilla-Garcia – Advisors: PhD in Finance Academic Director Professor René Garcia and EDHEC-Risk Institute Scientific Director Professor Lionel Martellini – Committee chair: Raman Uppal, EDHEC Business School – External examiner: Ravi Bansal, J.B. Fuqua Professor of Finance, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. Gideon Ozik – Advisor: PhD in Finance Academic Director Professor René Garcia – Committee chair: Raman Uppal, EDHEC Business School – External examiner: Professor Tarun Ramadorai, Professor of Financial Economics, Saïd Business School, Oxford University. Kaipichit Ruengsrichaiya – Advisors: Professors Florencio López-de-Silanes and Pierre Mella-Barral, EDHEC Business School – Committee chair: Professor Giuseppe Bertola, EDHEC Business School – External examiner: Jakša Cvitanić, Professor of Mathematical Finance, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology. Vijay Vaidyanathan – Advisor: Professor Pierre Mella-Barral, EDHEC Business School – External examiner and committee chair: Ulrich Helge, Professor of Finance, HEC Paris – Other committee member: Professor Florencio López-de-Silanes, EDHEC Business School. Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 2 - Besides the paper co-written with Dr Mantilla-Garcia, Dr Vaidyanathan wrote two essays on venture capital. The first of these looks at how the threat of “decertification” by a venture capitalist, i.e. the possibility of its non-participation in a follow-up financing round, may affect the market. The proposed model suggests that (in equilibrium), the implications ripple beyond follow-on valuations and feed back to first-round valuations, the choice of venture capitalists by the entrepreneur, the syndication decision of the venture capitalists, and even the choice of syndication partner. A large scale empirical analysis of venture capital investments finds support for strategic decertification in the data. The second essay on venture capital addresses the disconnect between academics and entrepreneurs on the touchy topic of the value delivered to entrepreneurs by venture capitalists. A survey of experienced entrepreneurs documents several areas of disagreement between entrepreneurs and academic theory on the value added by venture capital, some of the sources of these mismatches are identified; the data is subjected to a battery of statistical tests which confirm that the responses substantially represent the views of experienced entrepreneurs. After serving as President of EDHEC Risk Indices and Benchmarks–North America, Dr Vaidyanathan is currently exploring new ventures that would offer solutions to practitioners based on advances from EDHEC-Risk Institute and other research institutions. In his first essay, Kelvin Foo Chiah Shiung looked at international volatility transmission. He tested the contention that revenue exposure to foreign markets was a mechanism by which volatility from foreign equity markets was transmitted to S&P500 stocks. The paper finds evidence of significant volatility transmission that is robust to model specification, common latent factors to primary and US markets, and within a portfolio context. These findings are particularly relevant for diversification of US equity portfolios and volatility trading. Dr Foo’s second paper centred on improving corporate default predictions by incorporating liquidity and macroeconomic variables, in addition to traditional firm-level variables, in a canonical discriminant analysis. An optimal set of variables was obtained which allowed for accurate out-of-sample discrimination of defaulting and non-defaulting firms. Further improvements were achieved by industry segmentation prior to calibration. The paper documented low default predictability in segments with diversified businesses, implicit or explicit government sponsorship, and in the technology sector. Dr Foo has been Senior Risk Manager for Global Private Banking and Wealth Management at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore since 2010. Kaipichit Ruengsrichaiya studied theoretical aspects of corporate governance at the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels. His first essay considers the corporate governance mechanism in the context of dynamic agency problems and focuses on the optimal contract between manager and investor. It shows the value of governance mechanisms in security price as a separate contribution from operational profit and executive compensation. It demonstrates how investors benefit from better governance changes over time, depending on the firm’s stage. This perspective brings new light to the conflicting empirical evidence on the effect of corporate governance on security prices. Dr Ruengsrichaiya’s second essay looks at how the co-existence of stealing and empire-building decisions, as illegal and legal investor expropriations, affect macroeconomic performance. In equilibrium, the consequences of stealing and empire-building jointly determine the weighted productivity of capital after private benefits, which dictates investment and asset prices. The essay looks at the impact of governance changes on these variables and the risk-free rate, the risk premium, and the dividend payout ratio. Unlike the other graduates of the programme, Dr Ruengsrichaiya is aiming for a career as a professor and is actively scouting the academic job market. His papers have recently been presented at the Royal Economic Society Annual Conference held at the University of Cambridge, the Thailand Economic Conference, the Fourth World Congress of the Game Theory Society, and the Forty-fourth Annual Money Macro and Finance Conference held at Trinity College, Dublin. To celebrate these achievements, the first graduation ceremony for the EDHEC-Risk Institute PhD in Finance programme will be held on 2 October at the EDHEC Business School’s London premises. The commencement speech will be delivered by Mr Lars Rohde, current Chief Executive of the EUR100bn Danish public pension fund ATP and incoming Governor of Danmarks Nationalbank, the country's central bank. Programme participants and selected guests will be invited to join in the celebrations. Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 3 - Core Programme Faculty Strengtened We are delighted to report the hiring of Professor Jakša Cvitanić as full-time faculty member. Professor Cvitanić, who has been associated with the EDHEC-Risk Institute PhD in Finance programme since inception, is joining from the California Institute of Technology, where he was Professor of Mathematical Finance in the division of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Prior to joining Caltech in 2005, he held positions as Professor of Mathematics and Economics and Associate Chair in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Southern California and Associate Professor of Statistics at Columbia University. Jakša Cvitanić MSc in Mathematics (Zagreb) MPhil and PhD in Statistics (Columbia) EDHEC-Risk Institute, Member EDHEC Business School, Professor of Finance Specialist in stochastic methods applied to dynamic asset allocation, valuation, financial strategy and optimal contracts Jakša Cvitanić joined EDHEC Business School as Professor of Finance in September 2012. He was previously Professor of Mathematical Finance at the California Institute of Technology and has also held positions as Professor of Mathematics and Economics at the University of Southern California and Associate Professor of Statistics at Columbia University. His research work focuses on the application of stochastic methods to a wide variety of market and corporate finance issues. He has published in leading journals, including Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Management Science, and Review of Financial Studies, and has received numerous research grants. He currently serves as co-editor for Finance and Stochastics and Mathematics and Financial Economics, and as associate editor for several other journals, including Annals of Finance and Mathematical Finance. His main research interests are in mathematical finance, contract theory, stochastic control theory, and stochastic differential equations. He is the co-author of close to fifty articles published in scholarly finance, economics and mathematics journals. He is also the co-author of two textbooks: Contract Theory in Continuous Time Models (2011, Springer Finance, co-authored with Jianfeng Zhang) and Introduction to the Economics and Mathematics of Financial Markets (2004, The MIT Press, co-authored with Fernando Zapatero). The research projects to which he has contributed as principal investigator or co-principal investigator have received over 1.5 million dollars of funding. Professor Cvitanić holds a BSc and an MSc in Mathematics from the University of Zagreb and a MPhil and a PhD in Statistics from Columbia University. Recent Academic Articles Dynamics of Contract Design with Screening. Cvitanić, Jakša; Wan, Xuhu; Wang, Huali. Forthcoming in Management Science. Laws of Large Numbers for Self-Inciting Correlated Defaults. Cvitanić, Jakša; Ma, Jin ; Zhang, Jianfeng. Stochastic Processes and Applications. August 2012. Volume 122, Issue 8, p2781-2810. Financial Markets Equilibrium with Heterogeneous Agents. Cvitanić, Jakša; Jouini, Elyès; Malamud, Semyon; Napp, Clotilde. Review of Finance. 2012. Volume 16, Issue 1, p285-321. Co-development Ventures: Optimal Time of Entry and Profit-Sharing. Cvitanić, Jakša; Radas, Sonja; Šikić, Hrvoje. Journal of Economic Dynamics & Control. October 2011. Volume 35, Issue 10, p1710-1730. Price Impact and Portfolio Impact. Cvitanić, Jaksa; Malamud, Semyon. Journal of Financial Economics. April 2011. Volume 100, Issue 1, p201-225. Relative Extinction of Heterogeneous Agents. Cvitanić, Jakša and Malamud, Semyon. B. E. Journal of Theoretical Economics. 2010. Volume 10, Issue 1, Article 4. Beliefs regarding fundamental value and optimal investing. Cornell, Bradford; Cvitanić, Jakša; Goukasian, Levon. Annals of Finance. January 2010. Volume 6, Issue 1, p83-105. Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 4 - Faculty and student interviews FACULTY INTERVIEW: Tim Bollerslev Tim Bollerslev, Juanita and Clifton Kreps Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and Professor of Finance at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, and Affiliate Faculty, PhD in Finance programme, EDHEC-Risk Institute Professor Bollerslev is best known for generalising the autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH) approach put forward by his PhD supervisor Robert Engle. When it bestowed the 2003 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences on Professor Engle, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences described Professor Bollerslev’s GARCH model (1986) as “the model most often applied today.“ The GARCH model relates the variance of a model in the current period to the previous periods’ error terms and variances; as such, it makes it possible to recognise and model the time-varying nature of risk, a fact of financial time series. What have you been doing in terms of research since you advanced the GARCH model? Much of my research over the years has had to do with financial market volatility and how it changes over time, including the development of new and better statistical models explicitly designed to improve upon some of the deficiencies of the GARCH model. Volatility and risk are central to finance, and any empirical investigation, from asset allocation to risk management to option pricing that falsely assumes constant volatility runs the risk, no pun intended, of missing the most important effects that we see in the data. I have tried repeatedly to hammer on this point in many of my research papers. Another research strand of mine has focused on the analysis of high-frequency intraday financial data. In the last ten years or so, intraday transactions data has started to become available for a host of different markets. Working at this level gives you the opportunity to look at what really happens and how prices change in response to new information. It’s like getting out a microscope and zooming in. For instance, studying the high-frequency impact of macroeconomic news announcements gives you a much better understanding of how financial markets and the real economy are actually linked. Going back to my interest in volatility modelling and forecasting, high-frequency data also allows you to construct much better volatility measurements. Intuitively, suppose that the opening and the closing price of an asset are the same. This zero, or flat return day could very well mask a lot of intraday variation. The new realised volatility measure that I have been working on correctly identifies the true volatility and its various components without relying on any modelling assumptions. Related to this, I have also been working quite a bit on trying to understand the differences between these actual volatility measures and the way the market prices volatility, as embedded within option prices. It turns out that there is a lot of interesting information about notions of risk aversion and even return predictability sitting in that wedge. How is the elective course you taught in the programme related to your research? The course reviewed twenty years of research into volatility and correlation modelling, starting with ARCH/GARCH models and their extensions, then looking at higher moments, Value at Risk and extreme value theory, discussing multivariate volatility models and correlations as well as stochastic volatility models, then moving to high-frequency data and volatility modelling and realised volatilities. We covered the most current and popular methods and a number of their practical applications in asset and options pricing, portfolio allocation, risk measurement and management, as well as volatility trading. We also touched upon a number of important outstanding research questions. Does the course have particular relevance in the wake of the financial crisis? Certainly – the recent turmoil has underscored that risk varies over time, often widely; coming to grips with the time-varying nature of volatility is crucial and the tools we introduced in the classroom equip students to do just that. As part of the programme’s doctoral workshop series, you presented a working paper (Stock Return Predictability and Variance Risk Premia: Statistical Inference and International Evidence) that looks at information in the variance risk premium; could you describe its key results? Recent empirical evidence suggests that the variance risk premium i.e., the difference between options implied and actual realised return variation, predicts aggregate stock market returns, with the predictability especially strong at intermediate quarterly horizons. Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 5 - Our paper demonstrates that statistical finite sample biases in the overlapping return regressions underlying these findings can not “explain” this apparent predictability and that the inclusion of more recent data spanning the financial crises only strengthens the results. Further corroborating the existing empirical evidence pertaining to the U.S., we show that country-specific regressions for France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland and the U.K. result in quite similar, albeit not as significant, return predictability patterns. Defining a “global” variance risk premium, we uncover even stronger predictability and almost identical cross-country patterns through the use of panel regressions that effectively restrict the compensation for world-wide variance risk to be the same across countries. Why did you choose to become an affiliate faculty member of the programme right from inception in 2008? Initially, I was excited by the new approach to doctoral studies promoted by EDHEC-Risk Institute and curious to find out how the programme would fare… When the reception proved to be impressive, I was looking forward to teaching in the programme. Other contributing factors were the opportunity to come back to Europe from time to time – I am Danish – and of course the chance to talk to René Garcia, whom I have known and met regularly for some fifteen years. When René was in Montreal, he was at the centre of a vibrant community of researchers in our field, which explains why I would often travel to Quebec back then. How would you describe your experience teaching in the programme to date? I was a bit concerned for the students at first because this course is typically taught over a semester and giving it in an intensive mode makes it more challenging: as things build up and the material is quite technical, it is easy to fall behind. The students who took this course in Europe and Asia were very engaged and, I think, rose to the challenge. I have met very interesting groups and I enjoyed teaching to EDHEC PhD students very much. I also enjoyed contributing to the dissertation committee of one of the first programme graduates. Are these students different from those you are used to? At Duke, I teach in both executive education and doctoral programmes. Here the students are a nice mix of the two as they had both a great academic interest in finance and real experience from the field – this is perfect for me since I strive to do academic research that is in sync with the industry. What advice would you give to PhD students? This is probably going to sound lame but students should pursue research they like as opposed to researching something that sells: go where you heart is, do not be too strategic – it should be fun! STUDENT INTERVIEW: Mohan Subbiah Mohan Subbiah, British, 42 Chief Executive Officer HL Asset Management (Singapore) Could you tell us about your background academically and professionally? I have been a fund manager for over twenty years. I began my career as a long-only trainee fund manager at Hill Samuel Investment Management, now part of Lloyds Banking Group. I spent most of my career in London, with a period in the 1990s working for Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. I have been in equity long-short fund management for about 10 years now. I have been a hedge fund manager with BGI and prior to joining the Hong Leong Group to be the Chief Executive Officer for their hedge fund business, I was head of the Strategic Quantitative Investment Division, i.e. a proprietary trading desk, at UBS in London. Throughout the entire 20 years, I have always been a quantitative fund manager and therefore, very research and systems orientated. Although I am now the CEO, I am very much involved in developing the strategies with our researchers. My first degree was a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science I earned at the University of Birmingham, followed by an MBA from London Business School (LBS). So it seems that you are doing well and I assume you are also a CFA charter holder… Yes, I became a CFA charter holder many years ago. And in fact, I have been involved with the CFA Institute’s Council of Examiners as an exam question Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 6 - writer since 2001. Why would you need a PhD? A lot of the people that I have worked with or that I have employed had PhDs and rigorous academic training. I have always had those people around me and have learnt a lot from them without actually ever going through such training myself. When I was younger and more junior, learning through osmosis was acceptable. Now, I am the CEO and I believe in leading by example, I feel that if the people who report to me have all this rigorous training, it is not appropriate that I should not have it. Another reason for me wanting to do a PHD is the difficulties experienced in the financial world over the last three or four years. We do not know where the industry will be going from here, but it has certainly been shrinking for the last few years. I have done reasonably well in this industry for many years but the time will come one day where I have to start thinking about doing something else and this something else may be in academia. I am not necessarily suggesting going full-time in traditional academia – I would be a late starter – but maybe doing something that would bridge theory and practice, perhaps building on my work with the CFA Institute over the many years or something along those lines, where the intellectual background developed through the programme may give me a head start. The final reason, and perhaps the most motivating, is that the course is, quite simply, extremely interesting. Learning new material and getting exposure to very clever people brings out the best in us. The course provides a structured environment to continually learn and improve, both as an individual and professionally for the benefit of our clients. Why this particular programme of all the options? I am still reasonably successful and continuing in my current career. Taking three full years out from the workplace would be very difficult, both from a financial perspective and from a career progression perspective, so the idea of a part-time programme makes sense. The format of the EDHEC-Risk Institute PhD in Finance clearly stands out head and shoulders above everything else available in part time format. As a matter of fact, I had been searching for such a course for years but had never found a reputable institution until EDHEC appeared in my research. Another factor was that I was familiar with some of the core faculty members: as it happens, Pierre Mella-Barral and Raman Uppal, now at EDHEC, taught me at LBS. While I had heard of EDHEC for many years, I did not know that much about the institution to be honest. To have Pierre and Raman in the core faculty added a lot of credibility as far as I am concerned since they had stature at LBS and I had gained a lot from the MBA programme there. I knew they could not have moved to EDHEC if there were no other good people there. Given these two are leaders in their field, I made a guess that other EDHEC faculty would also be leaders in their respective fields, since joining the course I am pleased to find that my instinct was correct. What has been your experience so far in the programme? My experience is certainly positive even after just the first couple of weeks. Although I have been in the industry for twenty years, there were some elements of the first courses that I was familiar with as a practitioner but had not related to the underlying academic theory. I can draw on some of these to improve communication with our clients explaining not necessarily just what we do and the high level rationale, but why we do from first principles if necessary. I look forward to the electives as I trust they will not only increase my knowledge, but also be very relevant to potentially what I can use professionally for our clients’ benefit. Learning new material and being able to apply that in the ‘real world’ is obviously something I am excited about. Do you know what you want to work on? Not precisely. I expect to have a clearer view by the end of the year. Seeing new material will trigger new ideas. My background is in equity and asset allocation, so I imagine something along those lines although I am also attracted to the continuous time series courses. One interesting aspect is that I have a lot of data and I am used to doing empirical work so I can actually turn some of my academic work into actual products. What is your recommendation to people who may be contemplating the programme? The number one thing is to ensure that one can allocate sufficient time to the programme, because there is really a lot of work to be done independently, and outside of the block weeks. That said, I would like to underline that they are many positive things that one can take away from this course, right from the first week, which one can apply at work. Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 7 - Programme and faculty news Recent and forthcoming articles by faculty Below is a selection of articles published by programme faculty members over the last quarter as well as forthcoming publications. Appearing are articles in scientific journals co-authored by faculty members publishing under their EDHEC Business School or EDHEC-Risk Institute affiliations. Nonparametric Nonstationarity Tests. Bandi, Federico and Corradi, Valentina. Forthcoming in Econometric Theory. Time-varying Leverage Effects. Bandi, Federico and Renò, Roberto. Journal of Econometrics. July 2012. Volume 169, Issue 1, p94-113. Price, Wage and Employment Response to Shocks: Evidence from the WDN Survey. Bertola, Giuseppe; Dabusinskas, Aurelijus; Hoeberichts, Marco; Izquierdo, Mario; Kwapil, Claudia; Montornes, Jeremi; Radowski, Daniel. Forthcoming in Labor Economics. Dynamics of Contract Design with Screening. Cvitanić, Jakša; Wan, Xuhu; Wang, Huali. Forthcoming in Management Science. Higher-Order Durations with Respect to Inflation and Real Rates and Their Portfolio Management Applications. Fabozzi, Frank and Wu, Yuewu, Journal of Fixed Income. Spring 2012. Volume 21, Issue 4, p69-79. A Pricing Framework for Real Estate Derivatives. Fabozzi, Frank; Shiller, Robert; Tunaru, Radu. Forthcoming in European Financial Management. CVaR Sensitivity With Respect To Tail Thickness. Stoyanov, Stoyan; Rachev, Svetlozar; Fabozzi, Frank. Forthcoming in Journal of Banking and Finance. Optimal Corporate Strategy Under Uncertainty. Chen, Andrew; Fabozzi, Frank; Huang, Dashan. Forthcoming in Applied Economics. Portfolio Revision under Mean-Variance and Mean-CVaR with Transaction Costs. Chen, Andrew; Fabozzi, Frank; Huang, Dashan. Forthcoming in Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting. Sensitivity of Portfolio VaR and CVaR to Portfolio Return Characteristics. Stoyanov, Stoyan; Rachev, Svetlozar; Fabozzi, Frank. Forthcoming in Annals of Operations Research. Bond Liquidity Premia. Fontaine, Jean-Sébastien and Garcia, René. Review of Financial Studies. April 2012. Volume 25, Issue 4, p1207-1254. Measuring High-Frequency Causality Between Returns, Realized Volatility, and Implied Volatility. Dufour, Jean-Marie; Garcia, René and Taamouti, Abderrahim. Journal of Financial Econometrics. Winter 2012. Volume 10, Issue 1, p124-163. Assessing Misspecified Asset Pricing Models with Empirical Likelihood Estimators. Almeida, Caio and Garcia, René. Forthcoming in the Journal of Econometrics. Risk Aversion, Intertemporal Substitution and the Term Structure of Interest Rates. Garcia, René; Luger, Richard. Forthcoming in the Journal of Applied Econometrics. Measuring Local Individual Housing Returns from a Large Transaction Database, Gregoir, Stéphane; Hutin, Mathieu; Maury, Tristan-Pierre; Prandi, Geneviève; Annals of Economics and Statistics. July/December 2012. Number 107/108 Opening the Black Box: Internal Capital Markets and Managerial Power. Glaser, Markus; López-de-Silanes, Florencio; Sautner, Zacharias. Forthcoming in Journal of Finance. Diversifying the Diversifiers and Tracking the Tracking Error: Outperforming Cap-Weighted Indices with Limited Risk of Underperformance. Amenc, Noël; Goltz, Felix; Ashish, Lodh; Martellini, Lionel. Journal of Portfolio Management. Spring 2012. Volume 38, Issue 3, p72-88. Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Financial Performance: Disentangling Direct and Indirect Effects. Lioui, Abraham and Sharma, Zenu. Ecological Economics. June 2012. Volume 78, p100-111. Dynamic Allocation Decisions in the Presence of Funding Ratio Constraints. Martellini, Lionel and Milhau, Vincent. Journal of Pension Economics and Finance. August 2012. p1-32. Improving Portfolio Selection Using Option-Implied Volatility and Skewness. DeMiguel, Victor; Plyakha, Yuliya; Uppal, Raman; Vilkov, Grigory. Forthcoming in Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 8 - Recent and forthcoming presentations – a selection EDHEC-PRINCETON Institutional Money Management Conference The inaugural EDHEC-PRINCETON Institutional Money Management Conference was held on April 27, 2012, at the Princeton Club in New York. In the face of a number of key changes of paradigms affecting the investment industry, the event was intended to provide selected investment professionals with the latest academic insights related to institutional money management. The format of the conference was designed to facilitate the exchanges of views between academics and practitioners; it involved presentations by members of the faculty of Princeton University and EDHEC-Risk Institute, followed by a discussion with the audience. In delivering the introductory comments, Scientific Director of EDHEC-Risk Institute Professor Lionel Martellini stressed the importance of shifting from the provision of investment products and towards the provision of investment solutions. The philosophy of EDHEC-Risk Institute is that the focus of the investment industry should not be on generating investment products based on alpha, but on serving investors’ needs by helping them find solutions to the problems they face, more often than not through access to beta. In this context, the conference focused in the morning on the design of improved building blocks for some popular asset classes and in the afternoon on the design of improved asset allocation strategies. Fixed-income specialist Frank Fabozzi, Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School discussed research directions in bond indices In the first presentation of the day, Professor Raman Uppal of EDHEC-Risk Institute presented his research on developing a general framework for equity portfolio construction while showing how to calibrate norm-constrained portfolios and comparing their performance with different strategies and datasets. Turning to fixed-income markets, Professor Frank Fabozzi of EDHEC-Risk Institute looked in the following presentation at four research areas dealing with bond indices: investor duration target and stability of bond indices in relation to investor objectives; the concentration risk problem in bond indices; the stability issue for the average credit riskiness of a bond index and developing a useful measure of credit riskiness for index construction; and liquidity issues in bond index construction. In the last morning presentation, Professor John Mulvey of Princeton University examined the question of long-only and long-short commodity investments in an asset allocation context, and more specifically the role of managed futures and commodity funds and how to protect wealth during turbulent periods. Professor Mulvey discussed the advantages of highly liquid investments – such as in the managed futures domain – for protecting capital and for dynamic asset allocation. In the opening session of the afternoon, Professor Martellini analysed the challenge of long-term investing with short-term constraints, a question that EDHEC-Risk Institute has closely examined in recent years, notably within the “Asset-Liability Management and Institutional Investment Management” research chair supported by BNP Paribas Investment Partners. The Institute underlines that new forms of investment solutions should rely on the use of improved performance-seeking and liability-hedging building-block portfolios, as well as on the use of improved dynamic allocation strategies that explicitly take short-term risk budgets as inputs. It is only by putting the pieces of the puzzle together, and by combining the underlying sources of expertise and added value that the asset management industry will satisfactorily address investors' needs. Professor René Garcia of EDHEC-Risk Institute then looked at asset allocation decisions in the presence of regime switches. His research results show that regime-switching models are able to characterise well the joint distribution of financial asset returns and that the presence of regimes to capture the distribution of asset returns has important consequences for asset allocation. Effects vary according to the regime and the investment horizon. The share invested in stocks may decrease with the horizon contrary to a linear model with predictability and mean reversion. Predictability changes asset Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 9 - allocation even with regimes, especially at long horizons. PhD in Finance affiliate faculty member Yacine Aït-Sahalia, Director of the Bendheim Centre for Finance and Otto Hack 1903 Professor of Finance and Economics at Princeton University, made a case for the use of self-exciting jumps in portfolio and risk management Professor Jakub Jurek of Princeton University addressed the question of downside risk and alternative investments. His three key conclusions were that hedge fund returns exhibit downside risk exposure, passive downside risk exposure dominates active risk exposure, and endowments have barely covered their cost of capital. In other words, hurdle rates for investments with downside risk are significantly higher than suggested by linear models and are highly sensitive to portfolio composition and market volatility. Finally, EDHEC-Risk Institute PhD in Finance affiliate faculty member Professor Yacine Aït-Sahalia, of Princeton University, gave a presentation on asset allocation and risk management in a world where all asset classes can fail together. His conclusion was that jumps are needed to properly account for the risk in portfolio management, but that among jumps, one cannot stick to the simplest ones (Poisson) – self-exciting jumps are needed to provide a realistic description of turbulent times and consequently optimise a portfolio and conduct risk management. [More] EDHEC-Risk Days Asia EDHEC-Risk Institute Professors Ekkehart Boehmer, René Garcia, Florencio López-de-Silanes and Raman Uppal discussed their recent work on high-frequency trading, hedge fund modelling, private equity performance, and equity portfolio construction at the inaugural EDHEC-Risk Days Asia conference that was held in Singapore May 9-10 and drew over 800 participants. Professor Boehmer had just presented his work and participated in discussions at the European Systemic Risk Board/European Securities and Markets Authority workshop on high-frequency trading held at the European Central Bank (Frankfurt, Germany, 26 April). Professor Garcia will be discussing the implications of his non-parametric hedge fund model on performance evaluation and asset allocation at the Inquire UK Autumn workshop (Bath, United Kingdom, 30 September-2 October). Annual Conference of the Society of Financial Econometrics Professor René Garcia delivered an invited lecture titled “Robust Economic Implications of Nonlinear Pricing Kernels” at the fifth annual conference of the Society of Financial Econometrics (Oxford, United Kingdom, 20-22 June). Affiliate faculty members Mikhail Chernov and Francis Diebold were also on the programme: Professor Chernov presented his work titled “Sources of Risk in Currency Returns” while Professor Diebold, as current president of the society, acted as chair for the opening invited lecture. Nobel Laureate and former president of the society Robert Engle presented work titled “Dynamic Conditional Beta.” NBER Summer Institute Florencio López-de-Silanes, Professor of Finance and Law at EDHEC Business School, and Head of the Fund Governance Research Programme at EDHEC-Risk Institute, contributed to the 34th Annual Summer Institute of the US National Bureau of Economic Research Summer (Cambridge, United States, July 2012), where he presented his much-reported upon paper, "Letter Grading Government Efficiency", co-authored with University of Ottawa’s Alberto Chong, Dartmouth College’s Rafael La Porta and Harvard University’s Andrei Shleifer. The paper proposes one objective indicator of government efficiency, and uses it to shed light on two broad theories of the quality of government. The indicator describes the performance of the mail system in accomplishing a simple task: returning an incorrectly addressed international letter. Professor López -de-Silanes has also been invited to deliver the keynote speech at the Conference on European Economic Integration organised by the Bank of Finland and the Austrian Central Bank (to be held in Helsinki on November 26-27, 2012.) Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 10 - EDHEC-Risk Institute News A selection of recent EDHEC-Risk Institute publications • “Robust Assessment of Hedge Fund Performance through Nonparametric Discounting”, An EDHEC-Risk Institute Publication This research was produced as part of the "Advanced Modelling for Alternative Investments" research chair at EDHEC-Risk Institute, sponsored by Newedge Prime Brokerage. • “EDHEC-Risk North American Index Survey 2011”, Hedge Robust Assessment ofrmance Fund Perfo through Nonparametricg Discountin An EDHEC-Risk Institute Publication American EDHEC-Risk North vey 2011 Index Sur June 2012 April 2012 with the support of Institute Institute Almeida, Caio and Garcia, René, EDHEC-Risk Institute, June 2012, 80 pages. This paper evaluates the performance of hedge funds through a new nonlinear risk adjustment of returns. The risk adjustment is such that it prices exactly the usual set of risk factors considered in the hedge fund literature. This nonlinear risk adjustment goes beyond the usual linear regression methodology used in many hedge fund performance papers, including nonlinear exposures based on option-like features. The approach proposed in this paper overcomes two important limitations of the linear methodology: it captures the nonlinear exposure of a hedge fund strategy to several risk factors, and it is not limited to nonlinear shapes resembling standard option payoff patterns. This methodology is applied to various hedge fund indices as well as to individual hedge funds, considering a set of risk factors including equities, bonds, credit, currencies and commodities. The main message that emerges from the analysis on the performance of hedge fund strategies is that exposure to higher-moment risks on the various factors matters. Analysing the performance of HFRI indices on primary strategies and sub-classes of primary strategies, the paper reports sizeable differences in performance, between the linear and the nonlinear risk adjustment. Most often the nonlinear risk adjustment reduces the performance but for some sub-classes it enhances their performance. It also shows how to conduct a risk analysis and provides an example where a change in a single risk factor can affect the average performance of funds when more robust risk adjustment is applied. [Download] Amenc, Noël; Goltz, Felix; Tang, Lin*; Vaidyanathan, Vijay*, April 2012, 156 pages. As the choice of an index is a crucial step in both asset allocation and performance measurement, it is useful to investigate index use and perceptions about indices. The present survey aims to analyse the current uses of and opinions on stock, bond and equity volatility indices. While information on index vehicles is widely available, particularly in the case of exchange-traded vehicles, the objective of the survey is to provide unique insight into the users’ perspective in the index industry, not only including a description of the current practices, but also user perceptions on different indices and on benefits and drawbacks of index construction methodologies. Furthermore, there is a growing body of research on index construction and index use. Recent studies assess current indices and also propose alternative approaches to construct indices. This survey also serves as a tool to explore views of institutional index users on the conclusions of the literature in financial research. The survey elicited responses from 139 North American investment professionals. Overall, the respondents represent approximately $12 trillion worth of assets under management. This, in turn, represents around one third of all assets under management in the North American asset management industry. [More] Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 11 - “The Benefits of Volatility Derivatives in Equity Portfolio Management”, • An EDHEC-Risk Institute Publication tility The Benefits of Volatfolio Por Derivatives in Equitynagement Ma • “EDHEC-Risk Asian Index Survey 2011”, Amenc, Noël; Goltz, Felix; Mukai, Masayoshi; Narasimhan, Padmanaban; Tang, Lin, EDHEC-Risk Institute, May 2012, pages. [Download] May 2012 * At the time of publication, Renata Guobuzaite, Samuel Sender, Lin Tang and Vijay Vaidyanathan were EDHEC-Risk Institute PhD in Finance candidates. with the support of Institute Guobuzaite, Renata* and Martellini, Lionel, May 2012, 76 pages. The focus of this publication is to provide a formal analysis of the benefits of volatility derivatives in equity portfolio management from the perspective of a European investor. Its main contribution is to compare the risk/return characteristic of equity portfolios combined with long volatility exposure to those of a global minimum variance equity portfolio – the conventional approach to managing equity volatility. This paper is in fact the first to provide an explicit comparison of managed volatility strategies based on a global minimum variance portfolios and managed volatility strategies based on volatility derivatives. The results unambiguously suggest that the latter approach is a more efficient way to manage equity volatility, especially in market downturns periods. [Download] This research was produced as part of "The Benefits of Volatility Derivatives in Equity Portfolio Management" strategic research project at EDHEC-Risk Institute, in partnership with Eurex. EDHEC-Risk Days go tri-continental In 2004, EDHEC-Risk Institute introduced a new type of conference aiming to bring research insights drawn from its programmes to investment professionals. Since inception, these events have enabled close to 11,000 participants from over fifty countries to have access to the latest conceptual advances and research results in investment and risk management and to discuss their implications and applications with the Institute’s researchers. The EDHEC-Risk Days allow research results to be compared with the practices and needs of investment professionals. Owing to the Institute’s independence and academic orientation, a conference format that leaves time for both instruction and discussion, and a highly selective speaker panel, the EDHEC-Risk Days have become reference events for investment professionals who are concerned about learning about conceptual advances and maintaining best practices. In 2013, the EDHEC-Risk Days Conferences will be taking place for the first time on three continents. The longest-running conference in the series, the EDHEC-Risk Days Europe, will be held 26-27 March at Recent publications also include: • “Reactions to the EDHEC Study ‘Optimal Design of Corporate Market Debt Programmes in the Presence of Interest-Rate and Inflation Risks’”, Amenc, Noël; Goltz, Felix; Milhau, Vincent; Mukai, Masayoshi, EDHEC-Risk Institute, May 2012, 40 pages. [Download] • "Who Sank the Boat?" Response to the Finance Watch paper ‘Investing Not Betting’", Till, Hilary, EDHEC-Risk Institute Position Paper, June 2012, 40 pages. [Download] EDHEC Business School Professor Raman Uppal contributing to a roundtable on financial market regulation along with Axa Rosenberg Pan Asia Chief Investment Officer Mr Kevin Chen, IMF-Singapore Regional Training Institute Director Dr Sunil Sharma, Schroder Investment Management Chief Executive Officer Asia Pacific and Investment Management Association of Singapore Chairman Mr Lester Gray, and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation Chief Economist and Director of Economic and Investment Strategy Dr Leslie Teo Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 12 - The Brewery, its time-tested location in the heart of the City of London; the second edition of the EDHEC-Risk Days Asia will take place on 15 and 16 May at The Ritz Carlton, Millenia in Singapore; finally, the inaugural edition of the EDHEC-Risk Days North America will be held 8-9 October at the Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan in New York City. In 2013, this series of conferences is expected to draw over 2,000 professionals. CFA Institute and EDHEC-Risk Institute partnership expanded Research work to be discussed at these events will fall under two headings: passive investment and indexing and global institutional investment. On the first day of each event, advances in equity, fixed income, commodity and volatility indices will be discussed along with issues of index transparency and governance and the ongoing shift from asset allocation to risk allocation. On the second day, new perspectives on the theory of asset-liability management, liability and inflation hedging, the reform of pension schemes, and non-financial risks in fund management will be presented, and EDHEC-Risk Institute researchers will discuss their most recent research on investment and risk management in traditional, alternative and emerging asset classes. In the next calendar year, the flagship Advances in Asset Allocation seminar will be offered twice in London (on 4-6 December 2012 and 4-6 June 2013) and once in New York (on 16-18 July 2013). Established in 2008 and regularly updated to incorporate the latest research by EDHEC-Risk Institute, this seminar has trained hundreds of senior investment officers to the concepts and techniques needed to optimise asset allocation and risk management via diversification, hedging, and insurance. Designed and delivered by EDHEC-Risk Institute Scientific Director and EDHEC Business School Professor Lionel Martellini, this popular three-day course is intended for investment management professionals who advise on or participate in the design and implementation of asset allocation policies and portfolio models and for sell-side practitioners who develop new asset management and asset-liability management solutions for investors. Organised as part of the EDHEC-Risk Days in each of the three regions, the PhD forum will be an opportunity for a selection of second and final year PhD candidates to present their dissertation work to attendees from the institutional investor and fund manager communities. As in the past, all PhD in Finance students and alumni will be invited to attend the EDHEC-Risk Days on a complimentary basis. EDHEC-Risk Institute Scientific Director Professor Lionel Martellini will deliver the popular CFA-Institute/EDHEC-Risk Institute Advances in Asset Allocation seminar three times next year In an effort to better serve the investment management community, CFA Institute and EDHEC-Risk Institute have reinforced their executive education partnership to offer advanced investment management programmes in London, New York and Singapore. For the first time, the joint course offering will also include the Advances in Equity Portfolio Construction seminar, a course introduced by the Institute in 2012 and featuring EDHEC Business School Professor Raman Uppal and EDHEC-Risk Institute Head of Applied Research Doctor Felix Goltz. The seminar aims to provide investment practitioners with the tools to better understand the limits and benefits of different portfolio construction approaches, and to discuss portfolio construction strategies as applied in equity portfolio management and alternative indexing strategies. The two-day programme is intended for finance practitioners who contribute to the design and implementation of portfolio construction models and is also insightful for investment professionals who analyse or decide on the adoption of appropriate model portfolios or benchmarks for equity investments or who are interested in customising their strategic equity benchmark. Initially, the course will be offered in Singapore (on 20-21 November 2012) and London (12-13 February 2013). Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 13 - International advisory board welcomes four new members EDHEC-Risk Institute is pleased to welcome to its international advisory board four representatives of major end-investors from Asia, Europe and North-America. Newly appointed to the board are Dr Timo Löyttyniemi, Managing Director of Finland’s pension reserve fund (Valtion Eläkerahaston, VER); Mr Olivier Rousseau, Executive Director of France’s pension reserve fund (Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites, FRR); Dr Joseph Masri, Head of Risk Management at Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the country’s sovereign wealth fund; and Mr Joseph John Jelincic, Member of the Board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS). Dr Löyttyniemi heads the EUR14bn State Pension Fund, a buffer fund managing pension assets for Finland’s state employees. Before joining the fund in 2003, he acted in various positions in investment management and investment banking, including Head of Capital Markets for Mandatum & Co (now part of the Danske Bank group) and Managing Director for listed investment company Norvestia Plc. He is a member of the Finnish Pension Alliance investment committee, sits on the management board of various financial institutions and foundations, and contributes to various working groups; he recently authored a report on the future of state ownership. He holds has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Helsinki School of Economics. Mr Rousseau is the executive director and one of the three members of the executive board of France’s EUR35bn pension reserve fund. Over the last twenty-five years, he has managed a dual career, working as a civil servant and in banking in equal proportions. He started his civil servant career as deputy head of division (balance of payments, foreign exchange markets & regulation) within the French Treasury in Paris and his banking career as a portfolio manager for BNP in Tokyo. He has been the Alternate Director for France at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London and a Senior Adviser to the head of the international department of the French Treasury. He has also been the Managing Director of BNP Paribas Equities Australia, the Chairman of the management committee and the Group Risk Manager for BNP Prime Peregrine Group (Singapore and Hong Kong), and the deputy general manager and head of corporate and institutional banking for the UK and the Nordic countries at BNP London. He holds Masters in Law and Economics from the University of Aix-en-Provence and is a graduate of France’s Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the country’s senior civil service graduate school. Dr Joseph Masri is the Head of Risk Management at Qatar Investment Authority. As such, he is responsible for all aspects of risk management and performance measurement at the organisation. Prior to joining QIA, Dr Masri was responsible for investment risk management at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Over the course of some twenty years in the financial industry, he has also held the position of Global Head of Investment Risk Management at Barclays Global Investors as well as senior risk management positions at ABN AMRO, JPMorganChase and UBS. He holds a PhD and a Master’s degree in engineering economic systems from Stanford University and an engineering degree from École Centrale de Paris. Mr Jelincic is an elected member of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) board of administration. CalPERS is the United States’ From right to left: Dr Timo Löyttyniemi of VER, Mr Olivier Rousseau of FRR, Dr Joseph Masri of QIA, and Mr Joseph John Jelincic of CalPERS. Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 14 - largest public pension fund, with some USD237bn of assets under management. Its board has investment authority and sole fiduciary responsibility for the management of CalPERS assets. Mr Jelincic chairs the risk and audit committee and also sits on four other committees. He is a veteran employee of CalPERS having worked in the global equity, fixed income and real estate units of the pension fund’s investment office. Over the course of his career, he helped establish CalPERS futures programme, ran the stock trading desk, and contributed to CalPERS corporate governance initiatives. Mr Jelincic is also a past President of the California State Employees Association and past Chair of the California State Administrative, Financial, and Staff Services Bargaining Unit. In 2004, he was appointed to the California Performance Review commission. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in economics from Saint Mary’s College, an MBA in finance from Golden Gate University, and the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. EDHEC-Risk Institute’s international advisory board brings together some forty senior representatives from regulatory bodies, leading pension funds, professional organisations and business partners. Its role is to validate the relevance and goals of the research programme proposals presented by the Institute’s management and to evaluate research outcomes for their potential impact on industry practices. Board members also advise on the objectives and contents of projects deriving from the expertise of the Institute, thereby ensuring that graduate and executive programmes remain at the forefront of developments in the marketplace. [More information] programmes while being relevant to business and to society at large. As part of the conference’s opening comments Dean Olivier Oger reported on the recent results of the School’s research policy and underlined that the annual EDHEC Research Day aims to illustrate some of the outcomes of this policy through the presentation and discussion of recent research results with practitioners and journalists. The morning presentations and discussions then dealt with the unintended consequences of financial and banking regulation. The first part of the morning saw three EDHEC-Risk Institute PhD in Finance core faculty members present their research results on the question. Professor Raman Uppal spoke about the economic consequences of imposing a tax on financial transactions. Professor Abraham Lioui presented an asset pricing and asset allocation perspective on the regulatory flip-flops in the area of short-selling. Finally, Professor Florencio López-de-Silanes discussed the lessons that could be learned from the international record in the field of government ownership of banks, looking at financial and economic development, corruption, and bank failures. The second part of the morning was dedicated to a round table that brought together lawmakers, senior civil servants, industry practitioners, and EDHEC professors to discuss the topic of how to reinforce regulation in order to ensure improved functioning of capital markets and the economy at large. EDHEC Business School News Sixth EDHEC Research Day a success The sixth EDHEC Research Day took place on 21 June 2012 in London and drew close to 150 participants. The unifying theme for the 2012 edition of the conference was regulation and its consequences on business and the economy. For the last ten years, EDHEC Business School has been implementing an original research policy, which stresses the need for relevance and impact. The research conducted by the School’s professors and full-time researchers must not only abide by international criteria for academic excellence, but it must also contribute to the quality of the School’s EDHEC-Risk Institute PhD in Finance Assistant Academic Director for Europe Professor Abraham Lioui discussed the costs of regulatory instability Participating in the roundtable were EDHEC-Risk Institute Director and EDHEC Business School Associate Dean for Development Professor Noël Amenc, EDHEC Business School Professors López-de-Silanes and Uppal, Financial Services Authority Head of Economics of Financial Regulation Mr Peter Andrews, Member of Parliament Mr Douglas Carswell, Her Majesty’s Treasury Head of Banking and Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 15 - Financial Sector Analysis and Deputy Director of Financial Regulation and Markets Dr Martina Garcia, Institute of Economic Affairs Director General Mark Littlewood, Department of Business Innovation and Skills Better Regulation Executive Chief Executive Dr Graham Turnock, and HSBC Holdings Head of Global Markets Policy Mr Ed Wells. The first part of the afternoon saw the presentation of the latest work and findings of researchers from the School’s Legal Performance and Company Competitiveness, Financial Analysis and Accounting, and Economics research centres. Professor of Law Christophe Roquilly led a session titled “UK Bribery Act and the Long Arm of the Law: From Legal Risk Management to Ethical Compliance”, Professor of Accounting and Finance Philippe Foulquier discussed the “Consequences of Optimising Insurance Companies’ Financial Strategies in the Solvency Framework”, and Associate Research Director Arnaud Chéron presented international comparative evidence on the impact of the fixed-term and permanent employment contracts on wage inequality. EDHEC-Risk Institute PhD in Finance core faculty member Professor Giuseppe Bertola closed the day’s debates with a historical perspective of social and labour policy reactions to high public debt and an analysis of prospects for business and finance. Important information for prospective applicants Application Information Executive track: The next deadline for application for February 2013 admission (Asia-based programme) is 17 September 2012 and the next deadline for October 2013 admission (Europe-based programme) is 17 December 2012. EDHEC-Risk Institute is seeking to matriculate around fifteen new executive track participants in Asia and in Europe. Residential track: The next deadline for application for October 2013 admission (Europe-based programme) or February 2014 admission (Asia-based programme) is 17 December 2012. Programme presentations Programme presentations will be held in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. In the next three months, information sessions are scheduled on the following dates and in the following cities: 5 September 2012 – Hong Kong 11 September 2012 – Singapore 26 September 2012 – New York 2 October 2012 – London 5 October 2012 – Dubai / Abu Dhabi 23 October – Melbourne 25 October – Sydney 20 November – Frankfurt 21 November – Amsterdam 22 November – Zurich To register for a presentation, please contact Ms Brigitte Bogaerts. Institute EDHEC-Risk Institute 393 promenade des Anglais - BP 3116 06202 Nice Cedex 3 France EDHEC Risk Institute—Europe 10 Fleet Place - Ludgate London EC4M 7RB United Kingdom www.edhec-risk.com Newsletter PhD in Finance June / August 2012 - 16 - EDHEC Risk Institute—Asia 1 George Street #07-02 Singapore 049145