The Securities and Exchange Commission’s recently proposed updated rules for public companies to report the climate-related impact of their businesses to the federal government and their shareholders. While the commission collects public comments on the proposal up to June 17, the University of Maryland has crafted a Climate Finance and Risk Management Bootcamp (June 23 and 30) geared to mid-career and senior professionals across industries, who increasingly weigh climate-change factors into business decisions and financial disclosures.

As climate change increasingly affects business decision-making, risk managers, financial analysts and other leaders must anticipate how weather events may impact their growth outlook, estimate how port taxes may increase because of rising sea levels, develop contingencies for supply chain disruptions and respond to the unexpected.

Maryland Smith finance professor Lemma W. Senbet received the Ethiopian Crown’s Victory of Adwa Medal for his contributions to his native country. Senbet, an expert and leader in economic policy in Africa, is the William E. Mayer Chair Professor of Finance and the founding director of Smith’s Center for Financial Policy.

The consumer price index’s 7.9 percent increase over the past year “is excessive inflation” and “primarily the result of unnecessary fiscal stimulus ($1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act)” that has been “bolstered by excessively accommodative monetary policy by the Federal Reserve,” said Maryland Smith’s Michael Faulkender in opening remarks to lawmakers in an April 5, 2022, Senate Budget Committee hearing titled “Corporate Profits are Soaring as Prices Rise: Are Corporate Greed and

Maryland Smith finance professor Clifford Rossi has been selected by the Food and Drug Administration to serve on its Pharmaceutical Science and Clinical Pharmacology Advisory Committee.

With Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine intensifying, the United States and several key allies moved to cut Russia off from much of the global financial system – barring select Russian banks from participating the SWIFT global finance network.

Beyond quantifying and getting their boards to understand traditional financial risks such as credit and market risk, corporate risk officers are grappling with a host of nontraditional risks associated with and ranging from cyber to ESG (environmental, social and governance) and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).

Its proposed $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard would make Microsoft the world’s third-largest publisher of video games and, more significantly, would solidify its position in the development of the "metaverse” – widely considered the next evolution of the internet by which users in the virtual reality space interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.

Six months ago, Maryland Smith’s David Kass updated his semi-annual “stocks to watch” list, expanding the lineup of watch-worthy shares to 21. But now he’s narrowing the list. The move comes amid rising uncertainties – inflationary pressures, supply chain disruptions and the latest COVID-19 variant to name just a few, says Kass, clinical professor of finance at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Analysis of product life cycles has been underutilized by the likes of research economists and financial analysts in examining firm investment policies.