Speaker:Professor Paul Kofman

Topic:Ethical Leadership in the Finance Profession – Microfinance, P2P and Low-Doc Lending

Date:Oct. 25 (Thursday)

Time:10:30am - 11:30am

Venue:Room 111, Guanghua Building #1

Lecture information:

Despite increased public access to financial information, improved transparency of financial transactions, and almost real-time exposure of professional misbehaviour, stakeholder surveys continue to indicate a poor public perception of the finance profession. Is it inevitable for the finance profession to attract unethical behaviour? More than other professions, finance thrives on innovation. While economic growth and prosperity can only be sustained with innovative financial institutions, these innovations may in fact be the very source of public distrust. It may be the perceived intent of the innovations (to deceive clients, to increase profits, to evade taxes) that distorts the underlying prosperity message. This lecture takes a closer look at three recent innovations in financial intermediation – microfinance, social banking, and low-doc lending – to better understand this tension between public/social benefit and the (lack of) ethics in the conduct of finance.

Biography of Professor Paul Kofman:

Professor Paul Kofman

Dean, Faculty of Business and Economics

Sidney Myer Chair of Commerce

University of Melbourne

Professor Paul Kofman was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics and Sidney Myer Chair of Commerce in April 2012. He has been with the Faculty since 2001, including roles as Head of the Department of Finance and Deputy Dean. He is a Professor of Finance and received his PhD (Economics) from the Netherlands’ Erasmus University in 1991. Professor Kofman was the Younger Researcher Program director of the ARC Financial Integrity Research Network from 2005-2010. Before joining Melbourne, Professor Kofman held senior roles at Monash University, UNSW and UTS. His research interests are financial econometrics; constrained portfolio allocation; price discovery in regulated financial markets; extreme value analysis and financial applications; and insurance rate making.

//www.finance.unimelb.edu.au/who/staffweb.cfm?StaffNo=21#bio

欢迎感兴趣的老师和同学们参加！