Speaker Biographies

Robert Adams, Ph.D.
Federal Reserve Board

Bob Adams is an economist in the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board. His policy responsibilities include the analysis of the competitive effects of proposed bank mergers and acquisitions. His research centers on issues involving industrial organization, antitrust, banking, and banking productivity. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Board, Dr. Adams worked as a staff economist at the Department of Justice, Antitrust Division. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Rice University.

Dr Elena Beccalli, PhD
London School of Economics (UK); Università degli Studi di Macerata (Italy)

Dr Elena Beccalli is currently Visiting Fellow in Accounting at the London School of Economics (UK) and Associate Professor in Banking and Finance at Università degli Studi di Macerata (Italy). She obtained a PhD in Accounting and Finance at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Italy).

She is author of books and articles in academic national and international journals and conference proceedings in the area of economics of financial institutions. Research interests include stochastic efficiency measurement, technology and performance, merger and acquisitions, and analyst forecasts.

David A. Becher, Ph.D.
Drexel University; Wharton Financial Institutions Center at the University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Becher is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Drexel University as well as a Fellow at the Wharton Financial Institutions Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University. He received his undergraduate degree in Economics and International Relations from the College of William and Mary with a year at the Universite de Montpellier III in Montpellier, France.

Professor Becher’s research and teaching interests are in the areas of corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, regulation and financial institutions. His research has been published or is forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Business, Journal of Financial Intermediation, and Journal of Corporate Finance among others. His work has been presented several times at the Conference on Bank Structure and Competition (sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago), as well as the Conference on Corporate Governance in the Banking and Financial Services Industries (sponsored by the New York Fed, JFI, and NYU), the Financial Intermediation Research Society Conference on Banking, Corporate Finance and Intermediation, and others.

Dr. Becher is a former employee of the Risk Analysis and Bank Research Divisions of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. David Becher also served as a Special Assistant to the SVP for Risk Management at PNC Bank.

Allen N. Berger, Ph.D.
Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System; Wharton Financial Institutions Center at the University of Pennsylvania

Allen N. Berger is Senior Economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and Senior Fellow at the Wharton Financial Institutions Center. Mr. Berger also currently serves on the editorial boards of 7 professional economics and finance journals. He is past editor of the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, has co-edited 6 special issues of various journals, and is currently co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Banking.

Mr. Berger has published more than 100 professional economics and finance articles, including papers in the Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Finance, and Journal of Financial Economics. His research covers a variety of topics related to financial institutions. He received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983, and a B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University in 1976.

Emilia Bonaccorsi di Patti
Bank of Italy

Emilia Bonaccorsi di Patti is a senior economist in the Financial Structure and Intermediaries Research Division of the Bank of Italy. Her current research interests include scale economies in banking, small business lending and credit relationships, the role of information in credit contracts, the effects of institutions on credit market development. She has published studies in professional journals including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, the Journal of Banking and Finance on issues including the effects of bank mergers and acquisitions on lending, bank competition and credit availability, effects of bank privatization on efficiency, bank capital structure.

Elijah Brewer III, Ph.D.
DePaul University

Elijah Brewer III is currently an associate professor of finance at DePaul University where he teaches courses in commercial banking, money and banking, international finance, financial management, and business conditions. He was a senior economist and assistant vice president in the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago for over 25 years. His responsibilities were to oversee the antitrust analyses of bank holding company applications in the seventh Federal Reserve district and conduct economic research. His current research includes bank merger activity, deregulation, and corporate governance structure; derivatives activity and bank risk taking propensity; executive compensation, fee-based income, and performance in the banking industry; mutual to stock conversions of financial services firms; and the role of small business investment companies in financing the activities of small businesses.

Brewer was an adjunct associate professor of finance at the University of Chicago and an associate professor of finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has also been a visiting lecturer at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. His previous research has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Financial Services Research, the Journal of Risk and Insurance, the Contemporary Policy Issues, and the Journal of Economics and Business. He received a bachelor's degree from Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin, and an M.S in management and Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Rachel Campbell
Tilburg University; University of Maastricht

Dr. Rachel Campbell completed her Ph.D. on Risk Management in International Financial Markets at Erasmus University, Rotterdam in 2001. She currently works at Tilburg University as an Assistant Professor of Finance and at the University of Maastricht. Her work has been published in a number of leading Journals, including the Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Empirical Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Portfolio Management, Journal of Risk, and Derivatives Weekly'. She teaches for Euromoney Financial Training on Art Investment and works as an Independent Economic Advisor for The Fine Art Fund in London, and for Fine Art Wealth Management, UK. She is currently a member of the Supervisory board of ARTESTATE GmbH, based in Hamburg.

Santiago Carbó-Valverde
University of Granada

Santiago Carbó-Valverde was born in Gandía (Valencia, Spain) in 1966. BA in Economics (Universidad de Valencia, Spain), PhD in Economics and Master in Banking and Finance (University of Wales, Bangor, UK) and is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of European Finance (UK). In addition, he is a Full Professor in Economics at the University of Granada in Spain. He is Dean of the School of Economics and Business of the University of Granada. He has been Head of the Department of Economic Theory and History of the University of Granada since 2004. He has also been Director of the Economic Studies Department of Caja General de Ahorros. Currently, he is also the Head of the Department of the Financial Analysis Department of the Spanish Savings Bank Foundation (FUNCAS). He has written over 100 articles and other publications on the financial system. He has published in Journals such as Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, Regional Studies, Journal of Economics and Business, European Urban and Regional Studies, The Manchester School, Journal of Productivity Analysis, Applied Economics, European Financial Management, Public Money and Management, Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Applied Financial Economics, Revue de la Banque.

Ethan Cohen-Cole
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Ethan Cohen-Cole is a Financial Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. His finance research has touched on credit and operational risk management as well as bank mergers. He earned a B.A. from Harvard University in 1995, a M.P.A from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School in 2001 and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2006.

Ricardo Correa, Ph.D.
Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System

Ricardo Correa is an Economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in the International Finance Division. His research fields include banking, empirical corporate finance, and financial foreign direct investment. He conducts policy analysis in the areas of cross-border bank exposure and financial stability. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University and a B.A. in economics from the University of los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Prior to pursuing his Ph.D. studies, he worked as a junior researcher at Fedesarrollo, the leading economic think tank in Colombia.

Dr. Ken Cyree, Ph.D
University of Mississippi; Mississippi School of Banking; Graduate School of Banking at Louisiana State University

Dr. Ken Cyree is the Frank R. Day/Mississippi Bankers Association Chair of Banking and Associate Professor at the University of Mississippi. Ken received his doctorate and MBA from the University of Tennessee. He is the Director of the Mississippi School of Banking and a faculty member at the Graduate School of Banking at LSU. Ken worked in industry as a Credit Manager in the textile industry for many years before entering academia. His research interests are in banking, financial markets, interest rates, and market microstructure. He has papers published in the Journal of Business, Financial Management, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Financial Research, and the Journal of Financial Services Research, and the Financial Review and several other academic journals. He has served on the nominating committee, and is Vice President for the Program and President Elect of the Southern Finance Association. He has also served on the nominating committee for the Eastern Finance Association. In addition, Ken is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Business Research. Dr. Cyree was also awarded the Outstanding Teacher of the Year in 2007 at the University of Mississippi. Ken and his wife Lori reside in Oxford and they have a son in graduate school at Emerson College in Boston.

Robert (Bob) DeYoung
University of Kansas School of Business

Robert (Bob) DeYoung is the Capitol Federal Professor in Financial Institutions and Markets at the University of Kansas School of Business. In addition to his teaching and research duties at KU, he is also Co-editor of the Journal of Financial Services Research, a Research Program Coordinator at the FDIC’s Center for Financial Research, and a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Bob’s research and writings on financial institutions have appeared in academic journals such as the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Business, in industry publications such as the American Banker and the Journal of Credit Risk Management, and in the economic reviews of the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Chicago, and Kansas City. Prior to joining KU, Bob was an Associate Director of research at the FDIC (2005-2007); an Economic Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (1998-2005); an adjunct member of the Finance Department at DePaul University (2000-2003); a Senior Financial Economist at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (1992-1998); and a Joyce Foundation Teaching Fellow at Beloit College (1988-1992). He earned a B.A. from Rutgers University-Camden in 1983 and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989.

Valeriya Dinger, Ph.D.
University of Bonn (Germany)

Valeriya Dinger is assistant professor at the Institute for Economic Policy, University of Bonn, Germany. Her research focuses on financial markets and institutions.

Dinger was a visiting scholar at the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Federal Reserve of Cleveland, and Peking University (China). Before joining the Institute of Economic Policy, she was a senior research fellow at the Center for European Integration Studies in Bonn.

Dinger received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Bonn. She is married and the mother of two children.

Douglas D. Evanoff, Ph.D.
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; Graduate School of Business, DePaul University

Douglas D. Evanoff is a senior financial economist and vice president in the economic research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. As director of the financial studies group, he oversees research on financial markets and regulation. He serves as an advisor to senior management of the Federal Reserve System on regulatory issues and is chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s annual Conference on Bank Structure and Competition. Evanoff also serves as adjunct faculty member in the Graduate School of Business at DePaul University.

Evanoff's current research interests include bank cost and merger analysis, financial sector regulatory barriers, payment system mechanisms and accessibility to consumer credit. He has published studies in a wide array of professional journals and books on issues including credit access, bank regulation, industry structure, bank efficiency, payments systems issues and correspondent banking.

Evanoff received a Ph.D. in economics from Southern Illinois University.

Dr Pascal Frantz, PhD
London School of Economics and Political Science (UK)

Dr Pascal Frantz obtained an MSc in applied physics (ENSPG, Grenoble), an MBA (LBS), and a PhD in Accounting and Finance (LBS). He is currently a Lecturer in Accounting and Finance at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Research interests include economic analyses in the areas of accounting, corporate governance, and mergers and acquisitions.

John Goddard
Bangor Business School, Bangor University (UK)

John Goddard was appointed Professor of Financial Economics at Bangor Business School, Bangor University, UK in January 2005, having formerly been Professor in Economics at University of Wales Swansea. He has worked previously at University of Wales, Bangor, Abertay University and the University of Leeds. He also has several years’ practitioner experience in the UK life insurance sector. His research interests are in the Economics of Financial Institutions, Industrial Organization, and the Economics of Professional Sports. He has recent publications in Journal of Money Credit and Banking, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Forecasting, European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Industrial Organization and Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A. He is co-author of the monograph The Economics of Football (Cambridge University Press, 2001), and co-author of the textbook Industrial Organization: Competition, Strategy and Policy (FT Prentice Hall, 2005).

Kenneth D. Jones, Ph.D.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

Kenneth Jones is a Senior Financial Economist in the Division of Insurance and Research at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. His research focuses on deposit insurance (naturally), bank regulatory policy, banking industry structure, the effects of consolidation, megabanks, and systemic risk. Prior to his employment at the FDIC, he was an economist with the Financial Institutions and Markets Group at the U.S. General Accounting Office (1991-96). In addition to his research duties, Dr. Jones has taught on an adjunct basis at The George Washington University, the University of Mary Washington, and Troy State University. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from West Virginia University.

Edward J. Kane, Ph.D.
Boston College; Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Center for Financial Research

Edward J. Kane is the James F. Cleary Professor of Finance at Boston College. From 1972 to 1992 he held the Everett D. Reese Chair of Banking and Monetary Economics at Ohio State University. A founding member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee, Kane rejoined the organization in 2005. He served for twelve years as a trustee and member of the finance committee of Teachers Insurance. Currently, he consults for the World Bank and is a senior fellow in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Center for Financial Research. Kane has served as a consultant for numerous agencies, including the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the IMF, various components of the Federal Reserve System, and three foreign central banks as well as the Congressional Budget Office, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress. He is a past president and fellow of the American Finance Association and a former Guggenheim fellow. He also served as president of the International Atlantic Economic Society and the North American Economics and Finance Association. Kane is a longtime research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Besides authoring three books and co-editing two others, he has published widely in professional journals and currently serves on eight editorial boards. He received a BS from Georgetown University and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Nick Kraninger
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Nick Kraninger is a Senior Research Assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He has been involved in research on diverse topics, from cancer survival to bank mergers. Originally from Wisconsin, he received a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2006. Nick plans to apply to economics Ph.D. programs next year.

Dr. Roman Kräussl, Ph.D.
VU University Amsterdam (Netherlands); Center for Financial Studies, Frankfurt/Main (Germany)

Dr. Roman Kräussl obtained a first class honors Masters in Economics with a specialization in Financial Econometrics at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, in 1998. He completed his Ph.D. with honors on the Role of Credit Rating Agencies in International Financial Markets at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt/Main, Germany, in 2002. As the Head of Quantitative Research at Cognitrend GmbH, he was closely involved with the financial industry. Currently, he is Associate Professor of Finance at VU University Amsterdam and research fellow with the Center for Financial Studies, Frankfurt/Main. During the last years he was a research visitor/visiting professor at a number of places, among others, Tel Aviv University, University of Athens, University of Bologna, University of Budapest, Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main, European Commission in Brussels, Atlanta Fed, and Rensselear Polytechnic Institute.

Simon H. Kwan, Ph.D.
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Dr. Simon Kwan is Vice President and Head of Financial Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He conducts research and policy analysis in the areas of banking and finance. His current research focuses on bank risk-taking, bank charter value, market discipline, financial institution mergers, and bank efficiency. Dr. Kwan has published research articles in leading finance journals. He advises the Bank’s president on issues related to banking policy and financial market developments. Dr. Kwan received his Ph.D. in finance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Dr. Kwan was Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Arizona.

Donal McKillop
School of Management and Economics, Queen’s University Belfast (UK)

Donal McKillop is Professor of Financial Services in the School of Management and Economics at Queen’s University Belfast. He is a member of the finance committee of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland and a board member of the Economic Research Institute of Northern Ireland. Donal’s researches in the area of financial institutions and markets and has a special interest in the changing nature of mutual and cooperative financial institutions. He has written a number of books in these areas –Regional Financial Sectors in the British Isles (Avebury Publishing, 1992); Building Societies: Structure Performance and Change (Kluwer, 1995); The Strategic Development of Credit Unions, (John Wiley, 1997); Accountability: A Study of Irish Credit Unions (Oaktree Press, 2001); Women in the Irish Credit Union Movement – North and South (Oak Tree Press, 2002); and Credit unions in Ireland (ICAI, 2007). He has recently completed commissioned research on credit unions for the Royal Irish Academy (exploring the efficiency and performance of Irish credit unions) and The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (analyzing how to build better credit unions in the UK). Donal has recent publications in Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Journal of Banking and Finance and Journal of Business Finance and Accounting.

Steve Mercieca
Standard Chartered Bank, London (UK)

Steve Mercieca is an Investment Banking associate at Standard Chartered Bank in London specializing on financial investments in renewable energy. He is presently finalizing a Ph.D. in Banking and Finance from the University of Southampton (UK) on a part time basis, having previously completed an MSc in International Financial Markets from the same university. Steve’s primary research interests focus on the effects of revenue diversification on the performance of European banks; SME-bank financing relationships within Europe; and, the funding/lending strategies of European banks. He has presented his research at SME European conference and has published his Ph.D. work in the Journal of Banking and Finance.

Professor Philip Molyneux
Bangor University, Bangor, UK

Philip Molyneux is currently Professor in Banking and Finance and Head of Bangor Business School at Bangor University. He has published widely in the banking and financial services area including articles in European Economic Review, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Economics Letters and Economica. In 2001 he was the Visiting Bertill Daniellson Research Fellow at the Stockholm School of Economics and University of Gothenburg. Between 2002 and 2005 he has acted as a member of the ECON Financial Services expert panel for the European Parliament His most recent co-authored texts are on: Thirty Years of Islamic Banking (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Shareholder Value in Banking (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and Introduction to Banking (FT Prentice Hall, 2006). He is currently co-editing (with Berger and Wilson) the OUP Handbook in Banking. His main research interests focus on the structural features of banking systems, bank efficiency and performance. He has recently held visiting Professorships at Bocconi University, Erasmus University and Bolzano Free University (Italy).

Yoshiaki Ogura, Ph.D.
Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University (Japan)

Yoshiaki Ogura is an assistant professor at the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, Japan. Yoshiaki's research focuses on the impact of the market structure of the financial sector to its performance, in particular, information production, and the “metabolism” in the real sector. Prior to joining Hitotsubashi University, Yoshiaki was a research fellow at the Center for Advanced Policy Studies in the Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan (2005). He earned a B.A. from Kyoto University in 1995, and a Ph. D. in economics from Columbia University in 2005.

James Overdahl
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

James Overdahl is Chief Economist of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Prior to joining the SEC, he served as Chief Economist of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He received his B.A. degree from St. Olaf College and his Ph.D. in Economics from Iowa State University. He has written extensively on market microstructure, risk management, and investments, and is co-author, with Robert Kolb, of three textbooks, Financial Derivatives, Understanding Futures Markets, and Futures, Options and Swaps.

Dr. Fabio Panetta
Bank of Italy

Dr. Fabio Panetta is Head of the Department for Economic Outlook and Monetary Policy of the Bank of Italy. He has represented the Bank at various international organizations, including the OECD, the G10, the Bank for International Settlements, and the European Central Bank. In 2000-01 he participated in the G-10 Working Party on Financial Sector Consolidation, chairing the Task Force on Efficiency, Competition and Credit Flows. In 2003 he became a member of the Committee on the Global Financial System. Since 2005 he is member of the Board of Directors of the International Journal of Central Banking. Since 2004 he has taken part in meetings of the European Central Bank's Governing Council as Accompanying Person of the Governor of the Bank of Italy. In 2007 he was co-author of the 9th Geneva Report on International Financial Stability. His research work has been published in numerous international scientific journals, including The American Economic Review; The Journal of Finance; Journal of Money, Credit and Banking; European Economic Review; Journal of Banking and Finance; Economic Notes; and BNL Quarterly Review. His current research interests include: the effects of bank mergers, the determinants and consequences of IPOs, and the effect of credit risk transfer on the activity of banks.

Robin A. Prager, Ph.D.
Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System

Robin A. Prager is an Assistant Director of the Division of Research and Statistics at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. She received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University and a PhD in economics from MIT. Prior to joining the staff of the Federal Reserve Board in 1994, Ms. Prager was a member of the faculty of the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University for several years. She has also been a visiting faculty member at both Boston University and MIT. Her research has been published in a number of professional journals, including, among others, the RAND Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Business, Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Financial Services Research, Review of Industrial Organization, and Journal of Regulatory Economics. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the Review of Industrial Organization and Journal of Regulatory Economics.

Klaus Schaeck, Ph.D.
Cass Business School, London (UK)

Klaus Schaeck is a lecturer in banking at Cass Business School, London. Prior to his appointment at Cass, he taught international banking and finance at the University of Southampton, where he obtained his PhD degree. Klaus has been a visiting researcher at the Department of Finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was a summer intern and a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund. In 2007, he was selected as one of the five Lamfalussy Fellows of the European Central Bank. His research has been published in the Journal of Banking and Finance. Current projects relate to the link between market structure, competition, and efficiency in banking, and a separate project investigates the effect of asset backed securitization on bank stability.

Matthew Shum
Johns Hopkins University

Matthew Shum is an associate professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University. He received his PhD in Economics from Stanford University in 1998 and, prior to joining Johns Hopkins, also taught at the University of Toronto. His areas of research interests are empirical industrial organization and econometrics. His research has appeared in journals including Econometrica, the Review of Economic Studies, and the RAND Journal of Economics.

Brian R. Sterling
Sandler O’Neill + Partners, L.P.

Brian R. Sterling is a Principal and Co-Head of the Investment Banking Group of Sandler O’Neill + Partners, L.P.

Mr. Sterling joined Sandler O’Neill in February 2002 and is responsible for advising banks, thrifts and other financial institutions on strategic matters, focusing on mergers and acquisitions and financings. Since joining Sandler O’Neill, Mr. Sterling has been involved in a number of transactions for depository institutions, including working with Mercantile Bankshares on several acquisitions and on its merger with PNC, North Fork on its acquisition of GreenPoint Financial and its merger with Capital One Financial, Sun Bancorp on its acquisition of Community Bancorp of New Jersey, and Compass Bancshares on its merger with Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria.

In addition, Mr. Sterling has also spearheaded the Firm's work for Sallie Mae in its sale to an investor group, Clark in its sale to Ageon, Knight Trading in its acquisitions of Donaldson & Co., DirectTrading Institutional and Hotspot FXi, the New York Stock Exchange in its sale of Wave Securities and Affordable Residential Communities in the sale of its manufactured housing communities to an investor.

Mr. Sterling has also been involved in several of the firm’s assignments for Special Committees and Boards of Directors, including advising the independent directors of TD Banknorth with respect to the merger with TD Financial, the independent directors of eSpeed with respect to the merger with BGC Partners, and the independent directors of American Real Estate Partners on the acquisition of Icahn Funds Management Company.

Previously, Mr. Sterling was a Managing Director in the Financial Institutions Group at Merrill Lynch & Co., serving as the senior person responsible for providing relationship management and M&A services to large regional banks, finance companies and trading and technology companies. Prior to joining Merrill Lynch, Mr. Sterling founded and was Head of the Global Financial Institutions Group at Schroders, where he worked with banks, thrifts, insurers, and specialty finance companies in the U.S. and Europe on mergers, acquisitions and financings. Prior to Schroders, Mr. Sterling was a member of the Mergers & Acquisitions Group of the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Mr. Sterling is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was awarded a B.S. in Economics. He also holds a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Hirofumi Uchida, Ph.D.
Wakayama University (Japan)

Hirofumi Uchida is an associate professor of banking and finance in Wakayama University, Japan. He was a visiting scholar in the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University as a 2003 Fulbright Scholar. His research has been published in the Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Banking and Finance, and European Finance Review, among others. His research interests focus on banking, financial institutions, and financial system architecture. He received an M.A. in Economics in 1995, and a Ph.D. in Economics in 1999, both from Osaka University.

Haluk Unal
University of Maryland

Haluk Unal is professor of finance at the University of Maryland. He is a research scholar and special advisor at the FDIC's Center for Financial Research, a Senior Fellow at the Wharton Financial Institutions Center, and a member of the Standard and Poor's academic council. Mr. Unal holds doctorates in finance from Ohio State and in economics from Istanbul University, where he did his undergraduate work as well. He also earned a MS degree in accounting from Ohio State. His published work focuses on corporate bonds, bank mergers, pricing default risk, risk management, and mutual-to-stock conversions in the savings and loan industry. He is presently the Managing Editor of the Journal of Financial Services Research.

Bent Vale, PhD
Norges Bank (Norway); Basel Committee’s Research Task Force

Bent Vale is Head of Research for the Banking and Finance group of the Research Department in Norges Bank (central bank of Norway). He got his PhD in economics from the University of Oslo in 1992. He has previously taught macroeconomics and economics of banking at the University of Oslo and at the Norwegian School of Management. His main field of research is banking. Mr. Vale has published articles in Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Money Credit and Banking, Journal of Banking and Finance, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, and European Economic Review. Among his other publications, he co-edited The Norwegian Banking Crisis (Norges Bank Occasional Papers No. 33). Mr. Vale has previously worked in the Norwegian Ministry of Finance and in the Economics Department of Norges Bank. He is a member of the Basel Committee’s Research Task Force.

Francisco Vázquez
International Monetary Fund

Francisco Vázquez is an economist at the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the International Monetary Fund, which he joined in 2002. His work focuses on banking sector issues, including risk assessment, macro-financial linkages, and financial stability, and has participated in several IMF–sponsored Financial System Assessment Programs conducted in both industrial and emerging market countries. Mr. Vázquez has conducted work on the implications of foreign bank entry into emerging market countries for the workings of monetary transmission and credit markets in host countries, and for international risk-sharing. Before joining the Fund, he worked as a consultant in the banking industry, in the risk management area. Mr. Vazquez holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland in College Park, and an M.B.A. from IESA in Venezuela.

Larry D. Wall, Ph.D.
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

Larry Wall is a financial economist and policy advisor in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Larry has published a number of papers in leading financial economics journals and is currently an associate editor for several journals including the Journal of Financial Services Research. Dr. Wall has also been an adjunct faculty member of Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Larry earned his doctorate degree in business administration form the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his bachelors degree from University of North Dakota.

John O.S. Wilson
School of Management, St. Andrew’s University (UK)

John O.S. Wilson is Professor of Banking and Finance in the School of Management at St Andrews University. His research interests focus on the areas of Financial Institutions and Industrial Organization. John has previously co-authored four books: including Industrial Organization: An Analysis of Competitive Markets (FT-Prentice Hall, 2001); European Banking: Efficiency, Technology and Growth, (John Wiley, 2001); The Economics of Business Strategy, (FT-Prentice Hall, 2004); and Industrial Organization: Competition, Strategy, Policy, (FT-Prentice Hall, 2005). Successful funding awards include a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for the year 2003 - 2004. John is Associate Editor with the European Journal of Finance, and has recently co-edited special issues of Public Money and Management, Managerial Finance, and the Journal of Banking and Finance. He has recent publications in Journal of Money Credit and Banking, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A and Manchester School.

Lawrence J. White
New York University, Stern School of Business

Lawrence J. White is Arthur E. Imperatore Professor of Economics at New York University's Stern School of Business and Deputy Chair of the Economics Department at Stern. During 1986-1989 he was on leave to serve as Board Member, Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and during 1982-1983 he was on leave to serve as Director of the Economic Policy Office, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice. He is currently the General Editor of The Review of Industrial Organization and Secretary-Treasurer of the Western-Economic Association International.

Prof. White received the B.A. from Harvard University (1964), the M.Sc. from the London School of Economics (1965), and the Ph.D. from Harvard University (1969). He is the author of The Automobile Industry Since 1945 (1971); Industrial Concentration and Economic Power in Pakistan (1974); Reforming Regulation: Processes and Problems (1981); The Regulation of Air Pollutant Emissions from Motor Vehicles (1982); The Public Library in the 1980s: The Problems of Choice (1983); International Trade in Ocean Shipping Services: The U.S. and the World (1988); The S&L Debacle: Public Policy Lessons for Bank and Thrift Regulation (1991); and articles in leading economics and law journals.

He is editor or coeditor of ten volumes: Deregulation of the Banking and Securities Industries (1979); Mergers and Acquisitions: Current Problems in Perspective (1982); Technology and the Regulation of Financial Markets: Securities, Futures, and Banking (1986); Private Antitrust Litigation: New Evidence, New Learning (1988); The Antitrust Revolution (1989); Bank Management and Regulation (1992); Structural Change in Banking (1993); The Antitrust Revolution: The Role of Economics, 2nd edn.(1994); The Antitrust Revolution: Economics, Competition, and Policy, 3rd edn. (1999); and The Antitrust Revolution: Economics, Competition, and Policy, 4th edn. (2004). He was the North American Editor of The Journal of Industrial Economics, 1984-1987 and 1990-1995.

Prof. White served on the Senior Staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers during 1978-1979, and he was Chairman of the Stern School's Department of Economics, 1990-1995.

Prof. White’s webpage is found at http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~lwhite/. His e-mail address is Lwhite@stern.nyu.edu.

Liu Yang
University of California, Los Angeles, Anderson School of Management

Liu Yang is an assistant professor of finance at UCLA Anderson. Her research interests include theoretical and empirical corporate finance in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, corporate restructuring, corporate governance, and financial intermediation. Prior to earning her doctorate, Liu worked as a Senior Financial Analyst in the structured finance group in Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation.