Isenberg School of Management Celebrates with its Graduates on the World Stage

This has been an amazing week.

As readers of this blog know, I have been awaiting a confirmed announcement from Deutsche Bank about one of our graduates, Anshu Jain, who received his MBA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1985.

Now it is official and Deutsche Bank has announced in a press release that Dr. Josef Ackerman, who has been at its helm for 10 years, is retiring and co-chairmen have been selected: Anshu Jain and Juergen Fitschen. As my colleague in the Finance and Operations Management Department, Professor Sanjay Nawalkha, who is now in India told me, Jain's selection has been front page news in India (and, I expect, will be at least front page business news soon in the US). You can read more about Mr. Jain here.

Also, Hina Rabbani Khar, a graduate of our Hospitality & Tourism Management Program, was last week sworn in as Pakistan's Foreign Minister (essentially Pakistan's Hillary Clinton). She is this country's first female foreign minister and, at age 34, its youngest. You can read more about her here. The media in the Asian subcontinent has been heavily covering her appointment to this high position.

The Isenberg School of Management houses seven departments: my Department of Finance and Operations Management, the Accounting Department, the Management Department, the Marketing Department, as well as the Sports Management Department, the Hospitality & Tourism Management Department, and the Resource Economics Department. It is under the leadership of Dean Mark Fuller, who became our new Dean on August 1, 2009. He is also the holder of the Thomas O'Brien Endowed Chair (named after our long serving Dean whose hard work resulted in the naming and expansion of our School of Management).

Those Fascinating Financial and Social Networks

In 1997, I co-authored the book, Financial Networks: Statics and Dynamics, with Stavros Siokos, a former PhD student of mine, who has had a meteoric career in finance.

Since that book, my students, collaborators, and I have conducted a lot of research on this topic, and have advanced the state-of-the-art to include electronic finance within a network framework, financial networks with intermediation, financial risk and node and link vulnerability, and even the integration of financial networks with social networks.

Now, for the drumroll!

Speaking of the reality of social networks and financial networks, The New York Times has announced that the Deutsche Bank will be announcing its new leader this weekend, and, of the finalists. is Anshu Jain. Jain received an MBA from our School of Management at UMass Amherst (which I had mentioned in an earlier blogpost).

Plus, I heard today from one of my former colleagues at the Isenberg School of Management, Sheila Bair, who recently stepped down as the Chairwoman of the FDIC in Washington DC, and whose headship and leadership of that agency for 5 years has been heavily covered and lauded in the press. As of September 2011, she will begin her new position at The Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington DC.

You can read the interview with Ms. Bair conducted by Joe Nocera of The Times here.

Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics 2011 Announced and an Isenberg School Connection

I just received the letter below announcing the recipient of the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics 2011 and hearty congratulations are in order to Professor Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University!

Annually, I get a request to nominate a deserving individual and this choice is excellent!


Dear Prof. Nagurney,

The Center for Financial Studies (CFS) has announced Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, as the award winner of the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics 2011.

The Jury has chosen Professor Rogoff for his pioneering contributions in the field of international finance and macroeconomics, including research on exchange rates and central bank credibility. His work on sovereign default and debt restructuring, global imbalances, and the history of financial crises is highly relevant for understanding and addressing today‘s global challenges.

The academic prize, sponsored by the Deutsche Bank Donation Fund, carries an endowment of € 50,000 and is awarded biannually by the CFS in partnership with Goethe University Frankfurt. The Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics honors internationally renowned economic researchers whose work has a marked influence on research concerning questions of financial economics and macroeconomics, and has led to fundamental advances in economic theory and practice. The presentation of the prize by Josef Ackermann, CEO of Deutsche Bank, will take place as part of an academic symposium in Frankfurt on 22 September 2011.

Please do not hesitate to contact us, in case you have any queries.


With kind regards,

The members of Jury of the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics 2011


Prof. Luigi Guiso (European University Institute)

Prof. Michael Haliassos, Ph. D. (Director of the CFS)

Prof. Charles Yuji Horioka, Ph.D. (Osaka University)

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Otmar Issing (President of the CFS)

Prof. Dr. Jan P. Krahnen (Director of the CFS)

Prof. Dr. Raimond Maurer (Goethe University Frankfurt)

Dr. Thomas Mayer (Chief Economist of Deutsche Bank Group)

Prof. Carmen M. Reinhart, Ph.D. (Peterson Institute for International Economics)

Prof. Robert J. Shiller, Ph. D. (Award winner of 2009 and Yale University)

Prof. Dr. Uwe Walz (Chairman of the Jury 2011, Director of the CFS)


Contact:

Email: db-prize@ifk-cfs.de

Internet: http://www.db-prize-financialeconomics.org

But there is more exciting news, and a local connection to the Isenberg School -- it is being reported in various newspapers globally that one of our MBA graduates, Anshu Jain, is being tipped to be Deutsche Bank's co-head.

There has been speculation about this news for months now in the financial news media.