Tag: finance

Anjan Thakor sends a warning to the banking industry in an article published on the website, The Conversation.  

Prof. Thakor draws on his research into the conditions and causes of the last two major financial crises to suggest that we may be heading in the same direction, again.

His research reveals that the longer a lending boom lasts, the more trouble it foreshadows. Thakor’s latest research paper, “Lending Booms, Smart Bankers and Financial Crises,” will be published in the American Economic Review 2015.

Read Thakor’s article on The Conversation here. The site is “a pilot project [launched] in October 2014. It is an independent source of news and views from the academic and research community, delivered direct to the public.”

Dallas Morning News columnist Will Deener uncovers the hidden indicator of stock market direction revealed in new research from Olin professors Matthew Ringgenberg and Guofu Zhou.

Read more here and watch video.

Mike Crews, CFO, Peabody Energy, is also a 2004 alumnus of Olin’s Executive MBA (EMBA) program. He reflected on his time at Olin while speaking at the EMBA Leadership Perspective Series held at the Knight Center on March 31. He noted that he learned a great deal about self-awareness, managing people, working together, and especially thinking strategically while an EMBA student.

Crews comes from a family of CPAs – he’s the third generation in the accounting profession. He has risen through the ranks at Peabody from Senior Manager of Financial Reporting to Assistant Corporate Controller, Director of Planning, Assistant Treasurer, and Vice President of Operations Planning before he was promoted to Chief Financial Officer in June 2008. From the beginning, Crews found that there were people at Peabody who were interested in his development and that the company had opportunities for advancement and growth.

At one point in his career at Peabody, Crews saw a need to create a position of VP of Operations Planning and brought this idea to his superiors. They agreed and suggested he take the role, which he did. This was out of his area and comfort zone, and he expressed to the audience the need to be open to trying new things for your career to progress. He also spoke on the need to let people know what you want. Tell people if you want to advance or try a different role.

As Peabody’s CFO, he sees his top priority as execution of the company’s strategic plan. Crews observed that the CFO and CEO must be able to work side by side.

As a mentor, he said it is good to identify hard workers and give them further opportunity through stretch assignments. Of his mentors, he said, “mentors got more out of me than I ever thought.”

Information sessions, seminars, and other events are a great introduction to executive programs, and they provide an opportunity for you to meet Olin faculty, students, and alumni. Learn more.

Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke writes in his new blog, “Now that I’m a civilian again, I can once more comment on economic and financial issues without my words being put under the microscope by Fed watchers.”

Bernanke launches his blog this week as a Distinguished Fellow in Residence with the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. Follow him here.

Image: U.S. News

Knowledge @ Wharton reports on a paper by Olin’s Mark Leary, John Graham of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and Wharton finance professor Michael Roberts, “How Does Government Borrowing Affect Corporate Financing and Investment?”.  The authors use a century of corporate data to track the effects of government bond sales on corporate policies and behavior.

“New stock market indicator shows 2015 will be profitable,” an opinion piece by Mark Hulbert on the MarketWatch website credits research by Olin finance professors Matthew Ringgenberg and Guofu Zhou, and their co-author David Rapach, an economics professor at St. Louis University, for developing a new market tool based on short selling.

Hulbert writes, “The new indicator is based on the total amount of short selling in U.S. stocks. (Stock exchanges release information on short selling, which is a way that investors bet on a decline in prices.)

“Short interest is calculated by comparing the percentage of shares outstanding that’s sold short, or how many days a stock’s trading volume that short interest represents.”

Prof. Ringgenberg explains the insight that short sellers have in the marketplace in the video above. Read more research by Prof. Ringgenberg on short selling in Olin Praxis.

graph image: Matthew Ringgenberg