Welcome new members to the Centre for Global Finance

We are delighted to welcome Athina Petropoulou and Efthymios Rizopoulos as Post-doctoral Research Fellows at the Centre for Global Finance (CGF), School of Finance and Management, SOAS University of London. Athina and Efthymios joined CGF on the 1st of May 2020.

Athina is responsible for various research tasks under the AXA Chair in Global Finance. She has joined us from the University of Bath. Her core research interests lie in the areas of banking, where she investigates credit risk, liquidity risk, efficiency and competition across alternative banking models (e.g., community banks). Her other research interests also include finance and financial econometrics and she has been involved in research projects at the University of Bath and the University of Kent. Her research work has been presented at leading international academic conferences such as IFABS and INFINITI among others.

Efthymios is working on the ESRC-DFID research project (ES/N013344/2) ‘Delivering Inclusive Financial Development and Growth’. He has joined us from the University of Manchester. His research focuses on market microstructure, market quality and fragmentation, liquidity and asset-pricing. His research interests also extend to financial technology, crypto currencies, banking, green finance, behavioural finance, algorithmic and high frequencies trading, capital and financial markets and FOREX. His work has been presented in major conferences such as the FMA 2018 European Conference, European Financial Management Association 2017 Annual Meeting, Financial Econometrics and Empirical Asset Pricing Conference, Kyle Conference: Market Mechanisms and their impact and others.

Letter to governments of the G20 nations

Professor Leonard Wantchekon of Princeton University, who is also affiliated with the research projects at the SOAS Centre for Global Finance is one of the co/signatories to a letter to the G20 about Covid-19.

The gravity and urgency of the entwined COVID-19 public health and economic crises must be reflected in an unprecedented response. In this letter world leaders, leading global health experts and economists outline what is needed. The two crises require urgent specific measures that can be agreed on with speed and at scale. Both require world leaders to commit to funding far beyond the current capacity of our existing international institutions. The economic emergency will not be resolved until the health emergency is effectively addressed: the health emergency will not end simply by conquering the disease in one country alone, but by ensuring recovery from COVID-19 in all countries.

Full letter available at: https://voxeu.org/article/letter-governments-g20-nations

AXA Professor Victor Murinde chaired the BIEA Annual Lecture at the British Academy

20 November 2019

Professor Victor Murinde, Director of the Centre for Global Finance and Head of School of Finance and Management chaired the BIEA Annual Lecture 2019 at the British Academy. The lecture focused on building prosperity for Africa. The event featured three outstanding lectures.

The first lecture, on “New Approaches to Prosperity for Africa: an introduction to PROCOL Kenya” was delivered by Professor Henrietta Moore, BIEA President, Director of the Institute for Global Prosperity, IGP, University College London. This brilliant lecture challenged our current thinking on economic prosperity in Africa and went further to propose a new Prosperity Index using data from rural Kenya.

The second lecture, on “Data Driven Innovation in Kenya” was delivered by Professor Jaqueline McGlade, Professor of Resilience and Sustainable Development, IGP, University College London. This lecture provided exceptional insight on innovations for sustainable development in Africa.

The final lecture, on “Farming for the Future” was delivered by Dr Matt Davies, Associate Professor, IGP, University College London. The brilliant ideas covered in the lecture ranged from archaeology to modern methods of rural farming, taking examples from Kenya and a list of East African countries.

The event also featured very lively Question & Answer session on issues ranging from data protection issues to climate risk, firm innovation and the future of Africa.