Finance News: June 2025

Conference to Honor 40 Years of Kyle’s Impact
The Smith School and UBS will co-host the Kyle 1985 40th Year Anniversary Conference, Sept. 18-20 in Washington, D.C. The event will honor Albert “Pete” Kyle, Distinguished University Professor and Charles E. Smith Chair in Finance. It is timed to coincide with the anniversary of the publication of his seminal 1985 Econometrica paper, "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading." Kyle has received numerous awards for his landmark contributions to the theory of economics and market structure, including the Wharton-Jacobs Levy Prize in 2023. 

Faulkender Serves as Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary and Acting Head of IRS 
Dean’s Professor of Finance Michael Faulkender is the 16th U.S. Treasury deputy secretary and acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. He served in the Treasury in the first Trump administration, where he ran the Paycheck Protection Program to give loans to small businesses during COVID. Read more. 

Lemma Senbet Selected for Bretton Woods Committee
Lemma W. Senbet, the Dean’s Chaired Professor of Finance, was selected for the prestigious Bretton Woods Committee. He joins the preeminent group of CEOs, former presidents, cabinet-level officials and lawmakers that advocate for global economic and financial cooperation. Read more.

Rossi Testifies to Lawmakers on Climate-Driven Insurance Crisis
Risk expert and Professor of the Practice Clifford Rossi testified before the Maryland General Assembly’s House Environment and Transportation Committee on Jan. 21. He warned that extreme weather events, like the LA wildfires, are overwhelming insurance companies. Rossi, who serves as director of the Smith Enterprise Risk Consortium, proposed creating a federally chartered National Hazard Insurance Corporation (NHIC) to address the crisis. Read more.

Smith’s Center for Financial Policy hosts several conferences, including:

Nov. 8-9, 2024: The Peter Carr Conference on Mathematical Finance, an academic paper conference on mathematically rigorous finance research, held in College Park, Md., honoring one of the great innovators in mathematical finance.

March 17-21: Lapland Investments Fund Summit, a boutique academic paper conference, held in Levi, Finland, co-hosted with the University of Jyväskylä.

May 9: The Federal Reserve/Center for Financial Policy Short-Term Funding Markets Conference, held at the Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, D.C.

May 20-22: The UBS/Center for Financial Policy Annual Quant Conference, held in New York.

Sept. 18-20: Kyle 1985 40th-Year Anniversary Conference, a conference that includes presentations of academic papers and panel discussions, plus keynote speakers, held in Washington, D.C., co-hosted with UBS.

Hosted by Smith's finance department:

AI in Finance Conference: Opportunities and Risks 
June 10: This conference explores how artificial intelligence AI can be used by firms, investors, households and other market participants, as well as the implications of these technologies. Tania Babina chairs the conference, held in Washington, D.C.

Top Faculty Join Finance Department 
AI and business analytics expert Tania Babina joined Smith as an associate professor from Columbia University with her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Jordan Richmond is a new assistant professor with a PhD from Princeton University. They are among more than a dozen faculty to join Smith this academic year.  Read more.

For Fund Managers, “Going Long” is a Winning Strategy
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, lead article
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett famously stated that his “favorite holding period is forever”—a strategy that Russ Wermers confirms works in his latest research. Wermers, director of Smith’s Center for Financial Policy, introduces the Holding Horizon (H-H) measure and highlights that skilled long-horizon mutual fund managers outperform others, offering insights for individual investors and retirement plans. Read more.

A New Model for Investors to Evaluate Equity Terms
Journal of Finance
Serhiy Kozak and two co-authors from Yale School of Management have created a new asset pricing model for evaluating risky investments. It can price claims to individual stocks’ dividends, laying out realistic term structures for discount rates for different equity portfolios. Read more.

Dire Economic Consequences for Pretrial-Detainee Households
Review of Financial Studies
Many people arrested in the United States remain detained before trial — to ensure they don’t flee or pose a danger to others, or often because they can’t afford bail. Assistant professor Pablo Slutzky finds pretrial detention can have severe financial consequences for defendants and their households, increasing bankruptcy, foreclosure and insolvency rates, especially during housing downturns. His research highlights links between bail, poverty and criminal justice reform. Read more.

MS Students Collaborate with Google and Use AI to Analyze Credit Risk
Master of Quantitative Finance students worked with Google to use AI tools to analyze financial data for credit risk signals. Led by Smith’s Enterprise Risk Consortium director and risk expert Clifford Rossi, the students used natural language processing technology to comb through various financial documents and data on publicly traded banks and fintechs to find indicators of consumer and commercial credit quality. Read more.

Student Fund Managers Deliver $494K Grant to Smith
Smith students learn about stock selection, asset management and equity analysis by managing an asset portfolio that totals nearly $12 million across three funds. MBA student run the Mayer Fund; undergraduates manage the Lemma Senbet Fund; and students in the master's in finance, master's in quantitative finance and FLEX MBA programs run the  Global Equity Fund. Smith has one of the largest student-run fund programs among business schools, ranked No. 14 for assets under management in the latest survey by the Center for Investment Research. A dozen students in each fund—selected in a competitive application process—manage the assets for the school’s foundation, using the S&P 500 as a benchmark. In May, their success allowed the foundation to make a $494,000 grant to the Smith School from returns this year — the largest distribution from the program yet. Read more.

Private Equity Founder Invests in Students Working with Social Entrepreneurs
Ish Dugal ’05, founder of GoldenArc Capital and co-founder of IronArc Ventures, knows entrepreneurs need a lot of support and nurturing early on to succeed. He and his wife, Priya Atur Dugal ’05 —both Smith finance graduates—established the Dugal Impact Fellowship to provide stipends for undergraduates to work as summer interns with venture-backed, angel-funded or early-stage social enterprises. Read more.