Tag: corporate finance

On Sept. 15, WashU alumnus David Levy, ExxonMobil’s Controller, gave a presentation to the Corporate Finance and Investments Industry Seminar. Mr. Levy spent the majority of his time talking about the current energy industry environment. He elaborated on the historical allocations of energy consumption, provided insight into ExxonMobil’s view of how this would change in the future, and detailed some of the innovative methods of oil and gas exploration currently being utilized by ExxonMobil to meet the demands of today’s market.

Alongside his market overview, Mr. Levy also spoke about ExxonMobil specifically. He detailed where the company is involved in the oil and gas industry, which comprises everything from upstream operations like Arctic and deep-sea exploration, to research into products like rubberized materials and lubricants. Fitting for the Finance Industry Seminar, he concluded his presentation with an overview of the corporate finance functions within ExxonMobil and the wide variety of experiences that employees have exposure to.

Guest Blogger: Shawn Adams, MSF Corporate Finance & Investments 2017

Associate professor of finance Mark Leary has received first place in the prestigious Jensen Prizes for Corporate Finance and Organizations sponsored by The Journal of Financial Economics (JFE). Leary shares the prize with his coauthors, John R. Graham and Michael R. Roberts, for their financial research paper, “A century of capital structure: The leveraging of corporate America.” The paper was published in Volume 118, Issue 3, December 2015, Pages 658-683 of JFE.

The paper “sheds light on the evolution and determination of corporate financial policy by analyzing a unique, panel data set containing accounting and financial market information for US nonfinancial publicly traded firms over the last century.”

The Journal of Financial Economics or JFE is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering theoretical and empirical topics in financial economics. Together with the Journal of Finance and the Review of Financial Studies, it is considered to be among the top three finance journals.

The Jensen Prizes honor Michael C. Jensen, Founding Editor of The Journal of Financial Economics. His vision for the JFE as an outlet for timely, relevant, high quality scientific research in financial economics has been instrumental in its success.

Mark Leary

Professor Leary joined Olin in 2010. He taught previously at Cornell University and, prior to his academic career, worked for CVS Corp. and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Leary’s research investigates the motives behind corporate financial policy decisions, including leverage, security issuance, dividend and share repurchase decisions. His work has demonstrated the roles of adjustment costs, credit conditions, and peer firms in affecting financial policy.

Congratulations!

…the St. Louis-based agricultural company could save $500 million according to Olin associate professor of finance Radhakrishnan Gopalan. Gopalan tells the St. Louis Business Journal,  that “Monsanto could reduce its effective tax rate to 20 percent, down from its current rate of about 28 percent, by incorporating in the U.K. But Gopalan points out that so-called “tax inversion” lowers stock liquidity and the market value of a company’s shares, as investors prefer U.S. laws to foreign laws. Gopalan said Monsanto’s smaller investors ‘may not prefer the lower liquidity and lower valuation.'”

Monsanto has made a non-binding $45 billion offer for Swiss rival Syngenta and suggested it would move it headquarters to the UK if the buyout takes place.

Link to article:
Monsanto could save $500 million incorporating in Switzerland

Related blog post and video: Downside of Corporate Inversions

The 10th annual Corporate Finance Conference will take place at the Knight Center on November 1-2, 2013.  The conference features researchers from around the country and examines topics such as corporate investment decisions, capital structure, payout policy, mergers and acquisitions, corporate control and organization, corporate governance, private equity, banking and financial inter-mediation, and international issues in corporate finance.

The conference will include a practitioner session: “Financing and Payout Decisions in the Current Corporate Economic Environment” featuring Jan Bertsch of Sigma-Aldrich, Michael Crews of Peabody Energy and Wade Miquelon of Walgreen Co.

The event also includes a PhD poster session with a limited number of students from across the country.

Learn more about the conference in this video:

David Fischer

The Corporate Finance and Investments Platform Industry Seminar students heard these inspirational quotes from today’s guest speaker, David Fischer, CFA, a senior executive and leader in institutional investments.

“Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” – Warren Buffett

“Experience is what you got when you didn’t get what you wanted.”  – Howard Marks

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”  – Isaac Newton

He shared with the students advice, theories, and perspectives from several asset management industry figures he called “giants.”

Highlighting key takeaways from several books he has found thought-provoking and full of context with which to study asset management, David illuminated a landscape full of dichotomy where everyone wants high return for low risk.

Prior to speaking in class, David had lunch with a group of students to talk more in depth about his experience as Chief Investment Officer of Reinsurance Group of America, founder of Capstone Advisors, and portfolio manager with Lincoln Investment Management.

–  Post by Sarah Miller, Director of MBA Student Affairs