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Prof. Utpal Bhattacharya has been promoted to Chair Professor of Finance, effective July 1, 2020.

We are happy to share that HKUST Department of Finance faculty members have secured 8 General Research Fund grants in this current funding round of Hong Kong Research Grants Council.

Together with his co-authors, Prof. Alminas Zaldokas has received 18th Annual Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award in recognition for the outstanding contribution to antitrust scholarship. Ailin Dong, Massimo Massa, and Alminas Žaldokas are honored for their article, "The Effects of Global Leniency Programs on Margins and Mergers," published in the RAND Journal of Economics in 2019. The authors investigate how passage of national leniency programs has affected firms' margins and merger activity. National leniency programs give amnesty to cartel conspirators that cooperate with antitrust authorities. The authors find that such programs reduce the gross margins of the affected firms, suggesting they are effective at reducing cartel activity. However, the authors also find that firms react to such programs by engaging in more mergers, and that some of those mergers may increase market power. Their empirical results imply that although leniency programs are generally effective, their benefits are offset to some extent by mergers that substitute for cartels. The authors thus advocate for stronger merger review.

A team of our HKUST UG business students has been crowned Championship in the Local Final of CFA Institute Research Challenge 2019-20. The faculty advisor of the team is Prof. Lynn PI. They will be advanced to compete for the Regional Final in mid-March.

Three of HKUST Finance faculty members have won Franklin Prizes for Teaching Excellence this year, awarded for teaching excellence in the HKUST Business School undergraduate and postgraduate teaching: Prof. John Nash; Prof. Abhiroop Mukherjee; Prof. Deniz Okat. Prof. Yoshio Ozawa was also nominated for this award.